targeting $2.5M pre-seed, NY
Anurag is a technical solo-founder with solid research on the market he’s building at: mental health. he builds a platform to ensure therapists are covered in two areas: → the routine admin work is minimized → their patients are 24/7 covered with support where needed
that’s not an easy one to resolve, given the ethical question: how much can we trust AI to cover and assist with?
but apart from the product challenge, we’ve also got a GTM and positioning challenge: + two products to start with (therapists’ platform + patient's app)+ two markets to penetrate (India’s one and the US’s one - Anurag is based in NY)
imagine you are in the room with investors raising your pre-seed and you pitch two different products x two different markets = four (!) customer categories. a tough job really.
the fix: start with where the $$$ is. start with what drives your growth.
this is what we’ve figured out: neither patients, nor therapists are the ideal market entry. clinics are: - it’s a b2b customer (1 clinic = about 50 therapist) - b2b sales are always faster than 1:1 direct to consumer sales - you have to have a buy from a clinic for their staff to onboard your product - when you win therapist and they love your product → they recommend the app to their patients = organic user acquisition
so now it’s a pretty straightforward one: VybzHealth → clinic → therapist → patient
what I love about this case is that Anurag decided to work with those clinics on-premises: implement the product → watch closely what real customers need → implement new functionality. with that approach, you can’t lose.
product / business model$3M seed, Philadelphia
Nina is building an operating system for emerging designers. when you don’t have a big fashion house standing behind you, you have to figure out literally everything: supply chain, procurement, logistics, inventory, distribution - that’s a lot! so Nina builds such a hub - module by module.
but that’s not how it all started at all. Nina came to me after she’s built an amazing business by its own - a marketplace that connects emerging designers with their buyers. it’s there, it’s running, it has 57k followers and coverage in Vogue, Bazaar and Vanity Fair. so, now what?
how do you go from a D2C marketplace brand to a B2B platform? that’s quite a pivot for a business model. how do you pitch that change - is it a strength or a liability? and the key hint: how do you think about customer acquisition from now on - what would change?
a tricky part: Nina wasn’t comfortable talking about it as about the pivot: same core customer (emerging designers), same market, same needs and pain points. fair enough.
what we did: we repositioned the Fashionkind platform as an entry point. by now, it served as a part of the distribution layer - designers could sell their goods there among other platforms, it had delivery covered, and user acquisition figured.
so from now on, the marketplace becomes a starting point for a flywheel built to attract designers → offer them other modules → close the scaling loop.
that means a change in business model, customer journey, and sales funnel. on the investors’ side of things, it also means a completely different competition map, multiple revenue streams, x4 bigger market size. the last two had become the main speaking points and Nina took it from there.
ideal customer profile$4M seed, NY
Sambit is building an AI layer to make you talk to your database in plain English. he spent 12 years working on Oracle deployments and there’s one simple problem with huge databases: whenever you need a straightforward answer, you need a consultant to help you make sense of the numbers. that’s the problem Sambit’s targeting.
when we first met, the velocity he’s moving with, was absolutely amazing: the MVPs ready with the main modules, the customer-facing assets are in place, all looks good to go.
and yet, the story didn’t click. the reason: the ICP was wrong.
the story behind the reason: Sambit spent years working with enterprise level orgs - it’s easy for him to understand those folks, he’d seen this particular pain happen all the time - an ideal customer to start with, right? not quite.
on the downside: long sales cycles (6+ months), and it’s really hard to gain their trust when you’re a pre-seed startup with no track record of your own customers. besides, enterprise is a business model, but what about the market? those were our insights at the very first session of his business mapping.
now, what do you do if the sales cycle is too long and the market positioning is too broad? right, you niche down.
the fix: from industry agnostic enterprise automation to liquor store co-pilot, capturing store owners, distributors and manufactures in the loop in the $361B US market.
now, did the founder make a mistake when picking the initial market? no, not really. that market is still on the roadmap and Sambit will absolutely be after it later on. it’s the founding stage that was a mismatch.
the rest of it unfolds quite easily: GTM, differentiation, roadmap and projections, unit economics - all build up into a beautiful and simple to understand case. no hard time when explaining where the growth flywheel is coming from, no hard time when pitching the vision.
two weeks later, I woke up to a short message saying he's got his first five customers on board. the raise from there was a pretty straightforward story.
messaging$1,5M pre-seed, NY
Gustavo is building a retention platform for non-profits. because it’s easier to raise from someone, who’d already engaged with you, than to acquire a new donor - like, 7 times easier.
now, when getting ready to raise his seed, the main message he came up with was all around non-profits struggling to raise: severe federal cuts introduce additional pressure, and donor crisis is more severe than ever. sounds good, as it speaks of momentum, right?
yes, it does, until you start putting yourself into investors’ shoes and start asking questions: - what’s the payment capacity? what’s the average contract value? - what’s the problem awareness and do those orgs actively look for this kind of solution? - what’s time to value? in other words, when would a customer see the first money raised after they’ve adapted the platform
as a rule of thumb, I offer 10 to 15 such questions to reveal the gaps in the business model → positioning → GTM → stickiness.
so, after that session and a lot of comments like “hell, Leta, you’re such a pain in the a**!”, here’s what we’ve changed.
1. it’s been always hard to raise for non-profits, the problem is systemic 2. what we are facing now is a behavioral change: it’s harder than ever to capture potential donor’s behaviour. just like your gym subscription is competing not only with other gyms, personal coaches’ services, but also with your Netflix subscription as a nice alternative to a workout, people who donate, spend more time in social apps, dating apps, etc - so, the attention focus changes. 3. building truly strong communities is the key to resolve.
that’s it, that’s the main narrative shift. the core customers stay intact, the business model is solid, but the go-to-market messaging and the investor pitch changes dramatically. we are no longer operating on the market with scarce resources and “struggling customers”, we are offering a strong solution for a stable growth to customers who see the value. and take responsibility for where they want to be in 5 years from now - with the federal funding or without it (well, that’s brave to think about)