Building in Public 2#: 1000 Black Voices San Francisco Recap
A recap of what's happened while building Mane Hook-Up.
Hey there 👋🏾,
This weeks building in public newsletter is a bit different! Instead of recapping progress, problems and plans, I’m shedding light on our accelerator trip to San Francisco with 1000 Black Voices.
P.S. 💌 This newsletter is a day late as yesterday was the US election and I didn't want the recap to get lost in your inbox. 🛫 A recap of my trip to San Francisco
At the end of the summer, I applied to a few accelerators and I was selected for the 1000 Black Voices program that takes Founders who are expanding to the US to the other side of the pond to network, gain insight into what international expansion really looks like and fundraise.
This year, the cohort headed to San Francisco and I was fortunate to also be along for the ride. For me, the purpose of this trip was three fold:
Understand what investors (VCs & Angel’s alike) need to see from early stage start-ups
Develop my in-person pitch and make any necessary changes to my deck
Network, and meet new people who live in and around the Bay area
Needless to say, we did all of that and so much more. This is a pretty in-depth recap of the most interesting (and helpful) things that I experienced on the trip. I hope they help you as much as they helped me!
🎟️ Events & Meet-Ups
The British Consulate, Chamber of eCommerce, City Hall + Plug & Play
Every day was packed full of meetings with different governing bodies, investors and organisations that support founders in the city. This not only helped us to network but also discover who could support our efforts at international expansion on a local level.
I found these sessions really valuable. Mainly as, I connected with people that I, otherwise, wouldn’t know and learned a tonne about the realities of setting up a US base. There’s a lot to take into consideration, from where you’re incorporated to taxes, setting up a physical office and even potential grants, there is a lot to think about.
One of the biggest value adds from this accelerator was having access to all people who could honestly answer questions and point us in the right direction.
But, having worked our way around the city, here’s a quick summary of a few people and organisations that we met with:
Breakfast at the British Consulate
This body maintains and develop relations between the UK and the USA. Their work involves handling political, commercial, cultural, security and economic interests to the UK and their region.
A breakfast networking event with the Consulate was our first opportunity to speak to other UK based founders who had made their way to SF. From meeting teams (e.g. a company that’s helping people to save coral reefs by having their ashes — or their pets’ ashes — turned into coral and added to reefs in need) to learning about how the Consulate could support founders expanding in the US, we covered a lot in this networking session.
But, most importantly, we all had to introduce ourselves (giving me my first opportunity to freshen up my pitch). Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot (and first in line 😭) so I had to recap my pitch quickly, but it was a good first run and definitely set me up for the 1,326 other moments I needed to refer to it during the trip.
Brunch with the Chamber of Commerce
This body attracts, supports, and grows business through advocacy, economic development, and business development.
During this meet-up, we learned how UK business can integrate with the SF ecosystem. It left me with two very clear ideas:
How integrating with other governing bodies that work with a lot of local businesses could help with our B2B acquisition (stylists)
How these organisations can also help with customer research (by giving us access to both customers and stylists)
Given many of these bodies already have an established community, they can be used as levers to tap into the local businesses and customers we need (without having to spend a tonne on advertising). Another massive value add for the trip.
Post Lunch Catch up in City Hall
Known as the People’s Palace, San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco. It is also a destination historic landmark, frequently visited by tourists and photographers.
We also spent some time speaking to the team in City Hall about how SF had changed, especially for minority communities, and the impact this has had on the city’s development.
To our knowledge, African American’s make up about 5% of the population (those numbers have dropped over the years). This was pretty good intel for me as I can consider if SF is a city Mane Hook-Up should launch in sooner rather than later based on what the population looks like. But it was also interesting to hear as there are also fewer Founders of colour in the area.
A tour with Plug & Play
A VC firm that invests in early-stage technology companies. PNP is a global innovation platform that connects start-ups with corporations and investors and they help start-ups scale by enabling them to partner with corporations
Finally, on day four we headed to the Plug n Play head office. We met the team and got an insight into how they support start-ups, which is wildly different (in a good way) to any other accelerator or VC I’ve seen in the past.
There are walls of logos to show the number of organisations they either partner with or have invested in and it was wild to see. For any Founder (here or in the UK) that’s looking for an alternative to traditional support, I highly recommend getting in touch with them.
TechCrunch Disrupt (and the after parties)
This biggest (and busiest) event of the week was Tech Crunch Disrupt.
Three days rammed full of conversations on everything from recruiting, to formulating great relationships with investors and (of course) pitch battles. Although the event is behemoth, and there were hundreds of leaders on stage, there are only two talks that I remember vividly. They were:
Scaling start-ups with world class leadership (Clayton Bryan): Loved this talk for several reasons (not just the sports analogies). The key takeaway for me; world-class team members are interested in joining winning companies. So start-ups need to position themselves as a winner within their market to attract the top talent. This was pretty interesting as I think the terms ‘world-class’ and ‘number one’ are thrown around quite freely, without much thought. But the majority of teams are striving for this status, not operating in it.
Maximising investor relationships (with Brent Murri): Another great roundtable that shed some light on how to best communicate with existing and new investors in your network. From quarterly investor update emails (that I’m now considering switching to), to ways to clearly communicate your ask, there was a lot to be gained here. I also appreciated Brent’s candid answers to people’s questions.
Interview with Colin Kaepernick: It was amazing to hear more about Kaepernick’s story directly from him. Not to mention, he shared some interesting facts about the life he’s created around his business (up at 4am, training, then at his deck at 9am). While I don’t think I’ll be joining the 4am club any time soon, I will say it inspired me to create systems that will help me to be a better Founder.
Ironically, the most valuable thing about TechCrunch Disrupt, was actually all of the micro-events held across the city on the Tuesday and Wednesday evening.
Now, anyone who knows me will understand that I am a home body. Going out to bars, parties and meet-ups (that have more alcohol than food) is not my thing. But given I was in SF to network, I had to suck it up lol.
So, I signed up to pretty much every after event out there, to the point that my calendar looked like this…
Three events… 6 hours of networking.
As painful as that sounded at first, here’s why it was worth it:
Met the partner of a micro VC — we swapped details and booked in a F2F for two days later.
Connected with about 40+ Founders on LinkedIn, some of which were in my industry.
So, as painful as it was to crawl into my Airbnb after 11pm, burning the midnight oil meant making time to connect with other people in the area and industry, which was more than worthwhile.
TIPS ON MAKING IT THROUGH A TONNE OF EVENTS: For those of you who, like me, find events more energy draining than energising, give yourself goals for each one you head to. By the time I reached the final after event on Tuesday, I was exhausted. To stay focussed, I gave myself a target of 3x people to speak to and at least 2x LinkedIn connections to be made. After achieving that, I promptly went home. You don't have to be there all night to have an impact, so measure your performance to make the most of it all. 🎥 The Pitching
5x lessons learned from pitching
One thing is for sure.
I have never pitched so much in my life. Every introduction, whether to other founders or other start-up operators, was a pitch and a chance to see people’s reactions in real time.
We took part in pitching competitions, met with investors who have been in the space for decades and had to introduce ourselves at every meet-up and event (so much so that I quickly became tired of my opening line lol).
That said, there were tonnes of nuggets of wisdom shares along the way that will help other Founder pitching too. So, here’s a quick recap of what we saw over and over again.
Have a ‘purpose’ or ‘mission’ slide early on in the deck
I start my pitch with a quick one liner about who we are and what we do:
A beauty tech platform that helps people find and book appointments with textured hair stylists they can trust.
Seems pretty straight forward but, even with that, I kept hearing that my purpose wasn’t communicated quickly enough. At first it didn’t make sense, but I quickly realised that I this line wasn’t accompanied by a slide so anyone listening didn’t have a visual queue. As a test, I introduced a mission slide at the front of the deck and that has quickly anchored anyone who listened.
Slides are an important part of the process, to hold everyone’s attention and remember core pieces of information that you share.
Don’t spend half your pitch on the story
An investor timed how long I spent on my story, problem and solution slides (2 1/2 minutes to be precise).
While that doesn’t sound too long, it is when investors expect you to pitch in 5 minutes or less. So, you can’t really afford to spend 50% of your time limit just explaining the story.
Something that I’m (and other founders who are building products mainly for minority communities) are often up against is people not understanding just how painful my customers problem is. As a result, I was over explaining what we do and why. This is time taken away from key information like our GTM strategy, our revenue objectives and achievements, all of which are more complex (and just as meaningful) as the story.
I’ve fixed this by paying attention to the messages that really land with investors, leaning into them and dropping the content that has little to no impact. The result? My story is down from 2 1/2 minutes to about 1.
A lot of advisors can scare investors off (if they believe they all have equity)
We have eight advisors on our team, all of them are incredible and have played a huge role in helping us get to where we are now. So, naturally I put all of them in the deck. Little did I know, that some investors are worried and wondering how much equity is split between them (despite the fact that many of our advisors are volunteering as they feel so strongly about the problem we’re solving).
I was told to have 3-4 advisors in the deck and focus on those with a unique skillset that can be spoken about during the pitch. The main thing you need to communicate is the value they bring to the table. That said, if (like me) you have a powerhouse team of advisors, don’t have all of them in the deck, just those who will have the most impact.
One key point per slide and no more than 140 characters of text
Attention can and will drift during a pitch if you have too much on your slides. Less on the screen forces the people listening to focus.
While it can be tempting to bombard potential investors with all of the information, I was told to aim for no more that 240 characters per slide (basically the length of a Tweet).
It’s OK for your deck to be long
I’m not sure how many people have been told the age old lie that your deck needs to be no more than X slides long, but I definitely have.
That’s often led to the issue above. A tonne of text and one too many things being communicated on a single slide. After pitching to TechStars, their team said one of their portfolio companies started tracking the drop off rate of various deck designs, and you know which deck performed best?
The one with 30 slides.
They focused on one core message at a time. Less drop off rate, higher conversion rate and positive feedback all round. That said, don’t be afraid to add more slides if it means making the story understandable.
Highlight core experience that makes you the best person to solve the problem
Organic traffic is one of the key drivers for success with Mane Hook-Up. There are hundreds of thousands of people searching for these hair stylists online, which means people are already looking for a solution.
That said, SEO is very technical and something that few people understand. And investors know that. So while it sounds like a great idea, they’re worried about how we will execute without the right in-house experience.
At least until I briefly mention that I spent 4 years working at a job board living and breathing everything related to SEO and I’ve applied everything I learned to Mane Hook-Up. That’s a strong case for Founder/Market fit and I often failed to mention this when we landed on the team slide. An investor (very directly) asked me why I would fail to mention something that would sooth their concerns?
I haven’t left it out since.
Remember that, when pitching, it’s your job to reassure investors that your horse is the right one to back. Make sure you offer up as much information that positions you positively as possible.
TIPS FOR PITCHING: It's very easy to get stuck in your own head and become petrified of pitching before you've even started. My advice? Memorise your pitch. Knowing it largely off by heart, should somewhat calm your nerves. 🤸🏾 The People & Place
Meeting other founders and operators
This trip allowed me to meet so many people face to face for the first time.
From one of my advisors, to potential investors I’ve built relationships with and people working in the beauty tech space. There were even 2-3 people I knew via LinkedIn that I managed to connect with over lunch and at church.
In every interaction, there was an underlying sense of community. I got the impression that everyone wants everyone to win. And, more often than not, people were happy to put you in touch with potential collaborators as well.
Compared to London, there was definitely more camaraderie — not to mention innovation — in the space. That’s something I will definitely miss. People in SF were willing to go above and beyond to succeed in a way that I haven’t seen in the UK. They will look for every reason to make something happen (vs any reason to not take the plunge).
The lack of risk averseness came out in almost every Founder I met. Some had moved from other countries and cities, some had sold their homes and poured their life savings into the business, others were traveling from SF to New York when they didn’t know where their next pay cheque would come from.
Despite how stressful all of that sounds, they were equally happy to make the sacrifice and had little to no concern about what failure looked like. They were more interested in carving the path to success (whatever it took) and didn’t care if they failed. Even better than that, the community as a whole didn’t care to see people build a company and fail. They were applauded for trying in the first place.
Compare this to the UK, where I do think Founders are heavily scrutinised for any mistake or failure (which often stops people from wanting to go all in and try) and I can now see how and why innovation is so far forward in the States.
And, while there are some aspects of the city I know I couldn’t live with, I will miss the energy and vibe of spending time with other founders because of this.
What people had to say about San Fran
Finally, I wanted to get a view of what people who lived in SF thought of the area. Interestingly, people often said one of two things about SF:
This is the place to fundraise (and where founders should be living): something I heard from investors, some founders and many operators who had set up camp in the city. It’s no surprise given so many people come out here to fundraise. But the overwhelming feeling was pick a camp, here or New York.
It has changed a lot and, in some ways, it isn’t the same: Whether people were talking about the impact of COVID on the busy city, the rise in cost of living and (consequently) the rise in homelessness, or the decline in minorities in the city, every one had a different tale on how SF has changed over the years. This was my first time visiting, so I had no point of reference, but overall it seems like people have as many reasons to leave as they do reasons to stay.
Personally, I couldn’t live in San Francisco, but I could travel there for the key events to build and maintain good relationships.
And that’s it! A full recap of everything that happened in SF! If you have any questions about what I’ve written, feel free to jump in the comments.
🤔 Questions?
Feel free to drop any questions in the comments below! Until next week,
J x
P.S. Here are some of my other posts:
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