155 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F37
The last two weeks can best be described as a period of consolidation. Getting our next product, Mayday Balancer, ready to come out of beta for launch on 16 May. Getting our new website ready to go live. Finally, taking stock after a year live plus the Xero Emerging App award. Having a brief fallow period on fundraising and assessing the best approach forward. Really thrilled we did. Feel clear and galvanised for the next stage. Here’s the latest 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:
Post beta feedback, set and achieve launch for Balancer - met. Launch set for 16 May;
New website live - nearly met. Only get one chance to make first impression. Will be live imminently;
Fundraising decide upon and execute new plan - met.
Progress
Josh joined us last month as Head of Design. He’s done a great job leading on our new website as his first big project. It’s such a transformation. So excited for it to be imminently live. It’s a huge step change;
We had a great webinar last week with two of our customers, Harriet and MJ. Linking to the Emerging App win, we called it “Mayday: What’s All The Fuss About?”. I learnt loads about second order benefits they are getting as businesses from Mayday. Great written content for us to produce coming out of it. Above all, it was really gratifying to see such nice and capable people speak so positively about the value we’re delivering them;
I’m so pleased we’ve taken a relatively fallow period over the last two weeks on fundraising. I wrote up some notes re where we are, what we’ve learned and recommended course of action. I gained a lot of clarity from stepping back that way. Griff and I discussed them. He had a brilliant insight re how we might be able to better structure our pitch to make it simpler and easy to digest. He and I did a bunch of work on our deck and materials. I’ve had two pitches so far this week with the new materials. Both have gone well and in both I’ve acutely felt a much greater ease in getting our point across. I’ve now got a clear 3 pronged plan to execute upon across: 1) VC firms, 2) angels, 3) a special purposes vehicle (which we’re exploring doing via a Crowdfunding platform) for customers/finance leaders as well as industry operators;
We had our quarterly product update webinar this week. Was really exciting to demo Balancer, our third product which keeps intercompany loan accounts in balance. It’s coming together brilliantly for launch on 16 May. And great to introduce our vision for our revenue recognition product, which will be our centerpiece this quarter. So much exciting product to build;
I made good progress on our 2022 accounts so we can make our research and development tax relief claim.
Problems
Just the one new customer this fortnight (now 34 with 12 annual plans). This was expected as we ran a promo that expired mid April that brought forward a bunch of subscriptions. We need to devote more time to customer acquisition, which we will once this step change with the new website and Balancer launch is complete;
A response I got from a Family Office introducer we were doing some work with encapsulated the funding environment I am seeing and hearing from others: “I have been out to a few groups and particularly my main family office client in London. They are all slowing on tech investments at this point and likely for the remainder of the year. I don't want to muck you around David but I think you should be pursuing other investor dialogue which I am sure you are.” We’re in great shape with the investment we’ve already raised and I’m excited about the plan we’re executing now. But definitely not an easy market.
Plans
Goals for the next two weeks:
Successfully deliver on the two big milestones with the new website and Balancer launch;
Kick off new demand generation initiative(s);
My big focus will be fundraising and as many calls/as much progress across the 3 vectors of the plan as possible.
Look forward to updating in two weeks!