Espresso: YumBug Founder's Life Changing Hack to Fundraise Millions (super quickly)

0:00Espressos is sponsored by supply chain software gurus unleashed it talks to e-com and accounting software it's helped islands cut admin time in half get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability brands like candy kittens tiny rebel and trip all used unleashed and so should you you have this proof of concept you get almost that a thousand true fans we were talking about earlier not necessarily true fans but you have this story to tell to investors yes what is the story you tell them because i think it's easy raising money for i'm not eating nothing there's never there's no such thing as easy raising money it's not a thing but it's slightly easier if the concept's proven or there's a trodden path i.e chocolate like yeah you can bench that mark that against green and blacks or a drink you can benchmark against yeah a beer brand you can benchmark against cams and town brewery like bugs in a slimy bedroom in cambridge um what is the story you're telling to investors that this is going to be huge and this can be huge um and i mean get get loads of early stage start like earlier than us startup founders asking like how do you raise money um essentially that that first raise is um and sometimes still is like this is going to be a massive category you know we want this to be taking massive market share from meat right um and that's a massive market um if we become the next beyond me or the next this isn't chicken or the next corn um which is the opportunity um then we're all doing really well um then it's about convincing them that you're the team to do it um so those are the two things that we were playing on it's okay so just just because this will help a lot of people listening to this so showing them the opportunity yeah showing them that you're the team to do it how do you how do you demonstrate that well other than like just being yourself right like yeah and actually like a lot of it was just getting in front of investors and you know telling a good story and showing up you know as if you meant business you know like every touch point mattered and almost an invest treat an investor like a customer if you're trying to raise money what are some of those touch points that you think got your big clients sorry not big clients big investors maybe as an example how are you writing an email um you know how would you do that um uh well several ways and it depends on on you know who you're going after and how but you know i want to say two things that are completely the opposite but they both work yeah yeah um uh you know don't spray and pray you know like targeted email they really love what you're doing and this is all classic stuff right if you're trying to sell anything to anyone it's got to be you know bespoke um it's got to make sense you got to know why it makes sense um so you got to know what the victory speech is for them like how are they how are they going to their sort of investment committee and pitching you um and um just just having that in the back of your mind like this this relationship makes sense and this is why um just allows you to to you know craft an email i would say don't be too wordy um so our emails were really short it might have been like three sentences sometimes um especially so this is the flip side where we did spray and pray we used a thing called linked linked helper which is automating linkedin messages so you can scrape linkedin for anyone with like investor or vc or sustainability you know in their in their name it pulls together a list of people and our message was just super short it was hey brackets first name we're an edible insect startup looking to raise X amount

3:56this space is projected to grow 16x this decade 16x growth like massive and we are on a mission to take bugs mainstream so it's just setting that you that you'd get them thinking immediately about the opportunity so it's fascinating a couple of things on that um is think about their victory speech and i think um this is true with retail buyers as well is so someone i think it was lucy from nice wine she said i think it can be so easy to think about what you want as a founder think about how do we make our buyer famous yeah so how do we make our buyer when they're doing the tesco awards oh this is the buyer who brought in yumbug this is the buyer who brought in nice wines this is the buyer who brought in kombucha how do you make them famous i think that's really valuable um i like the whole spray and pray thing is interesting it sounds like something dodgy but the uh completely it works and like obviously as as a founder you've got no time so i would say the best roi was linked helper standardized message that that works and the mission that was that's the other thing amelia from bold bean co who's also raised a lot of money she would just to get buyers and to get investors she would just say this is our mission mission is the bridge between your is is kind of like the umbilical cord between you and the investors it's the language you both understand they've obviously had a mission if they've sold you've got a mission it's like if you can put the word mission and like who doesn't want to hear about a mission it's often a sentence um often it's a mission bush yeah well not quite the mission bush yeah yeah yeah yeah because then there'll be like a i don't know a thousand word essay yes sure sure sure um that's fascinating so then so you get the money on board and then what are the the what are the real painful steps when you're like i just want to give up like on the on the on the kind of tumultuous treacherous road to creating this alt meat essentially because i think so far it's been all like up and up and up and up and i've got this restaurant in finchley and pizza pilgrim like what are the real dark days where it's just been like oh why am i fucking doing this um to be honest fundraising is is like i think the toughest because you know the very sort of um uh you're right yeah i'm just yeah just sometimes i'm playing out of cameras yeah no worries um i mean very need to go out to fundraise says that you haven't got cash flow right so when you're going out to fundraise you know you're the boat sinking do you know what i mean um so i think any time having to do a fundraise is never fun um particularly because you're not focused on the business you are but you're not you know you're not focused on creating value for customers you're not focused on finding product market fit um you're focused on finding story investor fit you know um and i i think those for me are the hardest periods um because it feels it feels like stagnate it feels more stagnant than you know when i can pull my time and put it into creating really great food for people um educating people or creating great first experiences um because that's where i think i need to be spending my time on a podcast like this educating people um so and there's been you know a couple of fundraisers so you know going through those those peaks and troughs you know dealing with investors can be you know tough sometimes people several times have uh you know committed money or like great we're over the line and then they retract some for whatever reason how do you deal with that um is there maybe not give names but is there a particular poignant or potent moment where where that bubbles up a feeling of like being stung it's a it's a really good question and i think initially um early on you know it hit me harder when this when this happens um but i feel very fortunate in having the mindset that um it's always it's all progress if that makes sense so um the fact that this particular investor is still investing is still fucking amazing if i if i were if you asked me you know six months before if i were to get x person on um this investment firm or individual for five grand you know versus the x amount that they committed i would have been freaking ecstatic um and and i think a lot of um hi there thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso if on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink.

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