118 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F33
A good two weeks. Pleased with the progress. Great to see the new customers come through. Thrilled to be a finalist for Xero’s Emerging App Partner of the Year. Exciting progress on the commercial recruitment front. Plan A for fundraising is still showing promise. But need to spin up Plan B in parallel ahead of Great Friday. Here’s the progress, problems, plans (PPP) post. It covers progress and problems from building Mayday over the last two weeks. And plans for the coming two.
Goals For the Last Two Weeks
These were the goals set in the previous PPP post:
Hell for leather all on the field to explore if fundraising Plan A is possible before pivoting to Plan B if not - met;
Within the bounds of fundraising first, maximising all opportunities to get to new leads to hit our 100 customer Q1 goal - met(ish);
General marketing fundamentals back up and running - met.
Progress
4 new customers in the last two weeks. We now have 17 total. Within that we’ve doubled our number of annual plans from 2 to 4. Delighted with the proof points we have for early product market fit with Recharger and BRAG;
We’re one of three finalists for Xero’s Emerging App Partner of the Year. This is a prestigious industry award. We’re thrilled to be one of the finalists. Award itself is announced on 19 April;
A couple of exciting developments on the commercial hiring front at both a senior and junior level. Would be brilliant if things come to fruition. Should become clear over the next two weeks. We need to move fast as a company so I’m being conscious not to put all our eggs in a single basket. I’m also working with a couple of agencies. And for the junior role, I presented to the latest cohort of Jumpstart this week;
I’ve had 5 pitches go really well in the last two weeks. There is still very much life in the Plan A fundraising plan to find one or more VCs to lead a £1.5m raise. I’m away for a week at Easter so am setting a deadline of 7 April (Good Friday becomes Great Friday!) to close the round, be that Plan A or a Plan B £500k angel raise;
Marketing fundamentals are back up and running. Pauline has been a huge help and done some great work on this with the campaign we put live around the Emerging App Partner award;
Claudio is into his third week and already proving a phenomenal addition to the team. Griff has been on holiday this week. It’s been a great testament to Claudio, and Griff’s leadership, the way that Claudio has been able to help with support issues so proficiently in Griff’s absence.
Problems
The 100 customer OKR for Q1 is not going to happen. With the need to run Plan A and Plan B in parallel before Great Friday, there’s going to be a limit to new customer acquisition initiatives I/we can carry out. We’ve got a good number of current trialists and 750+ email list to target with our Emerging App campaign. So I’m optimistic we can get close to 50 customers by the end of the quarter.
Plans
Goals for the next two weeks:
Run Plan A and Plan B in parallel for funding so that Great Friday is on track;
Move fast and get to the right outcome on commercial recruitment.
Look forward to updating in two weeks!