KnowCap Changelog no. 5

Welcome to the 5th edition of the KnowCap Changelog. If you’re here, you are curious about how we are building things day-to-day.

We have been fortunate in that our approach resonates with founders and operators that invest in them with their time.

One piece where we are struggling with is with investors. How do you pitch them something that has never existed? No amount of information, research, modeling (and so on…) can help convince them if they aren’t a believer form the get.

If you have anyone that is looking to invest in startups or an alternative asset class. Send them over to us — we don’t bite.

Org

• Fundraising has kicked off in earnest. We are doing a multi-pronged approach to attempt to raise $1M maximum, or $500k minimum. Our goal is to put as many of our A+ team members on full-time, permanent roles as possible. This will help us grow our footprint by 2–3X.
• Almost ready to kick off the Startup Engine process for our internal product Coal (a fintech company)
• Bringing on three new team members for the Exchange program and 3 new Expert Operators into our Leap program. This still fits within our carry carveout targets for our ecosystem model.
• Since we give founders the optionality to exchange our equity for a revenue-share agreement at 18 months — we are at a potential balance sheet (accounts receivable) of $300,000. Our goal is to get to $1M by the summer of 2021. This will provide cash flow for operations — limiting the amount we need to fundraise and increasing our sustainability.
• Finally, have the next version of our proprietary Startup Engine process. We evaluate this process every year based on the learnings that we’ve experienced the previous year. This will ensure that we are always sharp and utilizing modern approaches to venture creation
• Reviewed five companies and interviewed one (we’ll be investing in them via Exchange)
• Sent out another deal for Leap.
• Organization retreat is two weeks away

Operations

Monsoon

• Worked on creating a comprehensive offboarding process — this process will show the value of our program by juxtaposing where the company started 8 months ago vs. where they are now

Cotton

• Kicked off their participation in the program and begin meeting with the founders. We’ve been experiencing some pains.
• All hands schedule will be every three weeks

Creative

Monsoon

• Close to delivering animation video for the organization for marketing. Skeptical that this will move the needle for user acquisition, if it does we’ll keep it. If not, we won’t give any other founders this service.
• Working through content marketing strategy to put them in motion

Deep Sea

• Finally completed the logos and delivered it (link here).
• Wrapping up presentation template so it can be leveraged by marketing and biz dev teams

Backbone

• Narrowed down the creative direction to a final option
• Finalized playbook for growth, messaging and positioning
• Delivery of website design is scheduled for this week

Technical

Monsoon

• Tentative launch on Aug. 24th
• New CTO will be attending our engineering calls to prep for handoff
• Finished implementing the login and register calls, working on the redux templates and integration
• Implemented UX/UI wireframes to connect messaging flows to the backend
• Implementing payment endpoints for the product via Stripe

Paper

• Two engineers are working through the implementation of the PRDs.
• As soon as Monsoon is complete, all of the technical function will be focused on Paper.
• As a Fintech company, Paper will be looking to raise funding fairly soon after getting through beta testing and evaluation

Cotton

• Meeting with the founder to refine PRD, so we know what we’re designing and how to build it as a clickable prototype