【Lesson #3 - Talk to your investors】
Many founders spend countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears fundraising. Endless Zoom calls, perpetual follow-ups, coffee chats, check-ins, dinners, networking events, are all examples of this "always be fundraising" mentality commonly held among bootstrapping entrepreneurs. It's a lot of effort, that oftentimes does not carry over post-fundraising. Once they get money in, the communications falter—a grave mistake and wasted resource, according to Hai Ho, the founder/CEO of Triip (AW#18), a blockchain powered travel platform based in VN.
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What I’ve come to learn is that the strength of your company is very closely tied to the strength of your relationship with your investors and how frequently you interact with them. Oftentimes in the early days of your startup, you tend to shrug off any need for external help. You managed to build up promising initial traction, raise a round or two of financing, hire top notch talent—things are good, why trouble yourself with managing investor relations. “I’ll reach out when there’s a problem” you might think to yourself.
Before, I would probably hold a board meeting once, maybe twice a year depending on everyone’s schedule, strictly for the purposes of corporate governance. I’ve since changed how I communicate with my investors. No matter how busy it gets, I make it an effort to send email updates once a month and have meetings with them twice a quarter.
Looking back on my 13 years of entrepreneurship, I wish I could’ve done this a lot sooner. Your investors collectively boast a wealth of experience, wisdom, and connections. Make sure you take advantage of that. Talk to them, in good times and bad. You’re on a long-term journey together, so the least you can do is put some trust in each other. They can help illuminate your blind spots, while leveling the playing field against competition, but only if you let them.
We often forget that founder-investor relations are still a type of human relationship at the end of the day, which can only be developed through consistent face-to-face interactions (virtual or physical), not just from a couple of WhatsApp messages here and there. Doing so has created a stronger bond and mutual understanding between my board and I, and ultimately allowed for more information flow, both ways. Most of my problems now have become much easier to solve than before.
Right when COVID first hit in early 2020, I was still somewhat optimistic about the fundraising climate and overall travel landscape, in my naivete. But one of our very early investors that I had recently rekindled with through my renewed IR efforts thankfully stepped in with a precautionary outlook, shepherding us through some scenario planning and advising us to cut costs to zero and assume we wouldn’t be able to get new funds in until 2024. His guidance was instrumental in helping us weather this storm so far. It’s been an incredibly tough time for travel companies this year, to say the least. But building this communication flow with my investors and advisors has made it 10x easier, for both tactical and moral support.
Applications for AW#22 are now open to founders targeting SEA, AI/IoT, or Blockchain/Defi -> https://bit.ly/2VQaEg9
