Hoda Mehr

Rules of frog kissing

11/19/2021

 
A lot has changed in our journey to raise a seed round:
  • We have a few investors who wired money
  • We have a bunch of interested investors that may or may not wire money
  • And, boy, oy boy, I kissed too many frugs, aka investors and VCs, in search of our prince or princess
And, I've learned a few things about kissing frogs. I write these rules of frog kissing mostly for myself cause I still have more to do, and I'm really tired of kissing. So, I'm putting some boundaries around the process to make it easier:
  1. Since I'm not a famous founder (aka second-time founder or those with a pedigree in startup land), I still need to kiss more frogs. Honestly, I thought I would close the round by now, but the reality is that we have some money. We may or may not get more, so I need to keep bringing more frogs to the mix. Accept that you have no choice. 
  2. Stop poking the uninterested frogs. I have this bad/good habit that I don't give up. When it comes to frogs that don't answer, just let them go. If they liked you on the first email/meeting, they would call you. 
  3. Give frogs the benefits of the doubt, but not too much:
    1. One email, if it turned into a meeting, great!
    2. Reminder meeting in 24 hours, if no answer, not interested.
    3. After the first email, one follow-up. 
    4. And one update with a major milestone update. Suppose it turned out into a meeting, great.
    5. And be done.
  4. Kiss more frogs.
What other things can you do to get frogs lining up? Some of my founder friends tell me to create an event to get people talking about your company. This is definitely a good point. It changes the context of the frog kissing competition for you. I started the rules by saying, "since I'm not a famous founder ...". You can change that context. Some of my founder friends say this can be changed quickly by creating an event or a post that gets people talking about you. For me, this didn't work. But, if you can change the context and turn you or your company into a hot thing, make it happen. 
1 Comment
Rokib Hasan link
1/9/2022 10:50:53 pm

Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts! I am sure y'all did try, however, just wanted to mention, perhaps finding a way to utilize your customer base to promote you might be a great idea. Happy customers can be the best way to get more frogs eventually!

One example I can share, your personal portfolio that you are sharing on the platform did great last couple of years. However, there is only 723 follower because it's behid a hefty paywall (for many at least, based on the follower number) you all can do some nerdy experiment on it and gain more users. Paywall can alway be tweeked I guess.

Best wishes as always!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Find me on Social Media
Photos used under Creative Commons from insider_monkey, jeffdjevdet
  • About
  • Blog
  • About
  • Blog