128 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F34
An excellent two weeks. Momentum that comes from clarity on the funding front, albeit with a fleeting banana skin. We’ve hit a brilliant rich vein on the hiring front. Great progress on new customers and reviews. And a hugely exciting partnership opportunity. 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:
Run Plan A and Plan B in parallel for funding so that Great Friday is on track - met;
Move fast and get to the right outcome on commercial recruitment - met
Progress
5 new customers in the last two weeks. We now have 22 total. We’ve had 2 more annual plans (now 6 total). Big landmark this week with our first ever customer to self-serve completely through the trial->subscription process, which is hugely exciting. Now human intervention required to get them seeing value and subscribing;
We’ve had a flurry of new Xero App Store reviews. Now 31 total (all 5*). As much as the quantity, the quality of the reviews is a real thrill. Is a great source of momentum to share these, and news of new customers, with the team;
I used to play quite a bit of poker. In poker, there is the concept of “rushing”. Where you catch a run of cards in quick succession. If feels like we’re “rushing” on the hiring front. We have an incredible hire committed to join as Head of Growth. She’s got a house move to complete and we’ve got a funding round to complete. But that’s all set to get going in the coming months, which is hugely exciting. We’ve hired Zoe as Commercial Executive. She wowed us with her warmth, curiosity/hunger to learn and pride in her work. She is doing a couple of weeks working with us before a pre-booked 2 week trip away. Then starts full-time 17 April. We’ve got a brilliant candidate for our design remit. We don’t have a full-time role here yet. We’re speaking to someone about a 50% role, which could be a great fit around their freelance work. We’re doing a days work together as a paid pilot on Friday 24 March. And finally another commercial candidate who doesn’t quite fit any roles we are hiring for. But is so good we’re going to look to build one so we can work together;
Now to hit the rush when it comes to fundraising! I’ve felt a real boost of momentum from the clarity that the VC led £1.5m raise is not for us right now. And focusing on raising an additional £500k on top of the £280k we’ve raised to date, is the right path. Great Friday on 7 April is 3 weeks away. We kicked off the additional £500k in earnest last Thursday with an email out to our existing investors. Within 12 minutes, one of our investors who has become an incredible super angel and friend to us, replied to say he’d invest another £50k on top of the £50k already invested. The SVB stuff (see below) was a banana skin to momentum but now that’s addressed, my diary is filling up with calls. We are also planning to have an SPV to roll up sub £10k investments from industry operators and our target customer of in-house finance teams;
We’ve had an incredible product partnership opportunity arise. Still early stages but it’s moving really well. Could be transformative in its impact for us;
Product development momentum continues. We had a big release this week, which both Pauline and Claudio contributed great work to. One of our biggest customers proactively got in touch via support to complement us on the new developments.
Problems
The collapse of SVB crystallised on Friday, after we’d kicked off the additional £500k close on the Thursday. Any serious startup investor was worrying about the collapse of at least one of their portfolio who had money tied up in SVB. Thankfully clarity is restored and we’re now able to build momentum again.
Plans
Goals for the next two weeks:
Be on track for Great Friday to close this funding round;
Set our Q2 OKRs.
Look forward to updating in two weeks!