StartUpLife and other stories #3
'No' is not the end of the world - it highlights work that needs to happen.
This week I have been preoccupied with my first-ever sales trip. Although I must say, I don’t really see it as a sales trip; rather, it’s a ‘get out there and build relationships and chat to people’ trip. I’ll be in Sydney next week, and I have coffees planned with people I know, who I haven’t seen in years and who I’m really looking forward to catching up with.
And I have coffees planned with some people who I have never met before, and I look forward to getting to know more about them and what makes them excited about the future.
I have a lovely lazy lunch planned with a friend who moved to Sydney a while back, and it will be lovely to catch up on all the goings on in her world. All in all, I reckon it will be a packed and funfilled trip.
In other news, I received a call from an Angel investor network. Unfortunately, none of their angels are quite ready to invest in our venture just yet. However, they shared that their members were very impressed with our credentials and backgrounds.
Your joint experience and credentials in the space [is] a clear positive point of note.
To date, we’ve received a lot of no’s from investors. And I suppose that many would see that as disheartening. I really don’t. I see all of this as extremely valuable feedback.
What has become super clear to me over the past few months (yes, it really has been months!) is that explaining retail consumer credit risk and scoring to people who don’t have that background is much more difficult than I would have thought. I mean, of course, I can explain what it is, why it’s important, what the current suite of challenges are and how we’re going to change the status quo. But (there’s that delightful but…)
But, I’m really not great at doing that in 1 minute!
So I continue to work on my ‘pitch’.
It’s a million times better than it was five months ago when we started this journey. It still has a long way to go.
In the meanwhile, we will continue to talk to potential clients, refine our pitch and carry on doing the things we need to do. We’re absolutely determined to change the way things are done. To make scorecards, the gold standard of retail credit risk assessment, accessible, to democratise effective credit risk assessment and to level the playing fields.
We have both spent so many years in the field, in the trenches, working within teams and with clients; we know how incredibly painful building and implementing new scorecards can be. So, we will keep doing what we’re doing.
A friend asked me the other day whether not getting funding is a roadblock. That’s an interesting question. Funding or no funding - both roads have challenges; they’re just different challenges.
So we’ll bootstrap. I’m absolutely certain we’ll still have fun and learn LOADS.
It helps that I have an incredibly supportive family. I absolutely could not do this without them. My kids are my cheerleaders, and always have something positive and encouraging to say. When things go our way, they’re always super hyped and excited, which is awesome. Dieter is my rock and is always there with a hug, a mug of coffee or a glass of wine.
And now, I’m going to look at our Tech Stack. I love the concept of outsourcing the tasks that don’t make me happy - tax anyone??? As always, there are many different ways to do things, and we’re working out what the most effective ways to do things are. I suspect that this is going to be a bit of a moving feast.
Kia kaha,