Day 0

A journey ends and a new one begins!

I’m writing this note on a tram to Beat81(Some HIIT training), really need to train and let go of some stress.

Today is day 0 of my new building journey, together with two great co founders I’m building Zell. With one simple goal, bringing a growth mindset into every single company! Our starting point will be sales people, solving the problem that a not coached sales person sells 20% less than a coached one, worse for their wallet and motivations and definitely not ideal for companies leaving 55k on the table!

In January I gave myself 8 months to find a problem, build a team and get customers (can’t find the exact goal but it was something like that). And now let’s go!

The status quo

Last months have been really successful, some news were covered in the last edition but I will do a quick recap:

• We built our MVP

• Got 3 paying customers and 500$ of MRR

• Have more than $250K of ARR in pipeline

• We joined the pre-residency of Antler

• We launched our new website where you can actually check out the product

What keeps me up at night

Won’t elaborate much on this:

• Not being able to raise in time

• Investors believe our market is too crowded

• The team loses motivation

Learnings

A new section that helps me remember to optimise for learnings and don’t worry about failures:

• VCs will always ask more: when fundraising settle on your story and your number. Only change if someone you deeply respect or many people share the same feedback. We were told VCs don’t like sales tech because it’s too crowded and there aren’t many successful exits. Then the same VCs invest massively in sales tech.

• Thinking small and big: Focus on things that don’t scale and specific pain (When talking to customers) and sell the future to investors (Big vision).

• Don’t focus on things you can’t control, but ask what you can do about it: I was pissed every investors would put my idea in the bucket with different companies that are not related at all. I would end every call thinking I just wasted half an hour. So I tried pitching my idea in different ways to see if the reaction changed, surprise surprise it did.

• Ask for help to anyone, doesn’t matter how rich and successful. Paradoxically you might get more answers from rockstars founders who raise 100M+ than from some who raised 2M.

• Turn envy into motivation: while talking to a VC he told me I didn’t fit their founders criteria and that they just invested in a company of someone I know. First reaction was of envy and anger, I wished they failed and started thinking all that’s wrong with that company. Second reaction I reached out to congratulate them and asked for some tips.

• You will always feel dumb: when looking back at my last months I am so pissed at all the mistakes I did. The months wasted on ideas with no chance of working, not trying to get paid from day one, forgetting to design a 11-star experience when onboarding our first paying customer and so on. A founder two years into his journey told me he feels dumber and smarter. Accept your mistakes and don’t repeat them!

The next month

I decided to change the frequency of this newsletter officially, because I could not stick to a bi-weekly plan, so from now on, longer time horizon:

• Fundraising

  • Write to 200 angels

  • Write to 10 Early stage VCs

  • Write to 30 founders that can help me

• Product

  • Get every active user to practice 30 minutes a month

• Sales

  • Close 1 more paid pilot

  • Zero churn

I know this edition is short and a bit of a mess but bear with me! I hope you still enjoy this wild ride. To the ones who kept reaching out during these months, thank you!! I am here because of you, without this newsletter I would have likely given up.