I don't know how I missed Kevin Starr's warning and set up CoolCoach as for-profit venture. Naively, I bought into the mirage of robust funding ecosystems for social enterprises. In place of risk capital, all I found is a lot of contradicting and confusing advice. Just like Kevin predicted in the article, I find myself lying face down in the sand.
But as the cliché goes, entrepreneurs are eternal optimists, and so am I. In spite of all the setbacks, I am still hopeful of finding the right group of funders to make CoolCoach's vision a reality. This time around I am especially hopeful, because I finally have a credible and simple roadmap to follow. I recently stumbled up this wonderful hands on guide - Raising a Seed Round 101. Seasoned investors Terrence Rohan, and Jack Altman (who have been involved in over 1000 seed rounds) teamed up with Lenny Rachitsky to write this. I was surprised to find out that they wrote this guide because such a practical hands on guide did not really exist.
The guide is pretty straight forward but for a successful outcome, I need to focus and put in the work. So here is my simple plan -
1. Week 1 (Feb 24 to Mar 1) - Figure out how much I want to raise, prep all the materials I would need, and research the list of investors/funders.
2. Week 2 (Mar 3 to Mar 8) - Get feedback on the prep work I have done while reaching out to funders/investors for meetings in Week 3 & 4.
3. Week 3 & 4 (Mar 10 - Mar 22) - Funder/investor meetings and follow up.
4. Week 5 (Mar 24 - Mar 29) - Wrap up a successful fundraise OR begin the process of shutting down CoolCoach.