The Exchanges

Q Uh, I see. I see. But I imagine what, there's probably only a handful though on that, right?

A Uh, it's pretty evenly split actually. I would say we have, we have, um, probably three distinct cohorts. We have Individual creators and influencers who I would actually define separately. I think influencers probably make most of their money from brand partnerships and sponsor posts and sponsored content. Creators are people who are directly monetizing their audience, selling subscriptions, selling content, uh, you know, tips and that kind of thing. So we have those individual creators. They're very well suited to our five dollar a month tier. Uh, then we have what I would call it community builders. Uh, you know, they may be people with a business objective. Maybe they have a shop or something. Maybe they have a paid membership community. They might be an activist. Maybe they have a mighty networks. Maybe they have a Facebook groups, uh, set up. Maybe they have a slack or something like that. And then we have brands. We have e-com operations. That are, you know, DTC Instagram brands that are, uh, you know, building text message lists and doing promos and they have an email newsletter and they need a link in bio and then they're doing collabs with other brands and they do it at clubhouse spaces and that kind of thing.

AI assessment note: “Uh, it's pretty evenly split actually. I would say we have”

Q Got it. I'm still not sure I follow, but I understand you have a wait list. You're letting people and conversions are going up, which is great. Um, what do you, there's probably one or two things, you know, people have to do during the trial period so that you increase likely they do start paying. What are those one or two things?

A So one of the key things that we track is when people come on, they, they request an invite to Norby. They tell us upfront what they're most interested in. There's usually a particular wedge that they come to us for. We marry a bunch of different functionality, right? So we have landing pages, we have SMS, we have emails, uh, we have event hosting, uh, we have LinkedIn bio. We ask people in our onboarding flow, you know, like, what are you primarily interested in using Norby for? And maybe they are, they do a bunch of online events. They do a bunch of events as they're marketing. They're looking for a better event management suite or They've wanted to get into SMS, but, you know, community starts at a hundred, a 150 bucks a month or whatever, and it's expensive, and that's really the only consumer option, or whatever, they want a more customizable link in bio than Linktree, whatever it is. One of the key things that we measure is when do they reach for a second tool? They told us that they came in for events and now they're sending text messages. They told us that they came in for Lincoln bio, but then they realized they can do their newsletter through us. Um, that time, how long does it take them to discover they can do, uh, you know, a second part of their operation through us? Um, and you know, how, how engaged are they with that second feature? Um, as soon as they reach for…

AI assessment note: “One of the key things that we measure is when do they reach for a second tool?”

Q So, so, so 200, maybe multiply times like 10 or 15 a month on average instead of five, you're doing a couple thousand bucks a month in revenue, right? Is, is sort of where you're at today. And, and where were you a year ago? Did you have any revenue a year ago or no?

A We did not. So we started this, we went full time on this at the very tail end of 20 20. Um, myself and my two co-founders, and until this summer, uh, it was just the three of us, and we were just, you know, building these tools slowly, you know, starting to pick up our, our, uh, because we had built our own community, we had a great network of kind of early people to test concepts with and get feedback from and get prototypes to. Um, so we spent a lot of the spring doing that and kind of took the wraps off in the summer. And, uh, unveiled our website and started doing events and activations, uh, with our own customers, uh, co-hosting things. Um, and then we, uh, we, we raised a round of funding in July and we've been, you know, building out the team since then.

AI assessment note: “We did not. So we started this, we went full time on this”

Q What did you do? That's not easy. What did you do in the first four to five weeks to generate that kind of demand?

A Yeah. Um, the first two weeks I talked mostly to people that, uh, I didn't really care if I won or lost because I'd never done this before. And I just did like eight meetings a day for two weeks and just, um, you know, practiced and fell on my face a lot and got a lot of very quick no's, um, and learned how to tell the story of what we were doing and why it was important and what the opportunity was. Um, I, I, we are obviously all true believers and, you know, think that there's a huge, huge market here and a massive opportunity over the next couple of years. Um, but, um, we're, we're all first time founders. None of us have done this before. And so just learning structurally how to tell a story about where you are and where you're going, um, how you've gotten where you are and, and why that makes sense and how that leads into a natural trajectory toward the next one, three and five years. Um, practice, practice, practice, practice. And for me, at least, Um, nothing beats learning on the job, just going out and doing it, and it's, it can be crushing because fail very quickly. Um, but we, we designed it so that, like, we, I did a bunch of cold outreach. Hit up everyone who I could, who, you know, could make an introduction or whatever, um, teed up as many interviews as I could, um, and saved the best for last and, um, tried to generate, um, you know, we at the same time were tak…

AI assessment note: “I just did like eight meetings a day for two weeks and just”

Q What was the subject line? When you emailed investors cold, what was the subject line?

A Um, I could go back, I could go back and find some of them. Some of them, what I would do is, um, because we had, we had built our own community, I would drop links to things that we had done, uh, or I would, I would post a link to an event that we had done, uh, or I would post a link to, you know, a write-up that we had gotten somewhere, um, or, you know, every single one of them was individualized. That's one thing that, like, I didn't just, like, copy and paste and do the same thing to a thousand different email addresses. I would, Do, you know, five minutes of research about the person that I was emailing, try to figure out something about them, write a subject line that tied in what we were doing and something that I thought might interest them and then give them an interesting link to check out in the email. Just one don't, you know, bombard people with a million different things to look at and keep it super, super, super short and casual. Uh, and that worked pretty well.

AI assessment note: “write a subject line that tied in what we were doing and something that I”

Q Um, and what was that cap? I mean, most people in the seed or pre-seed are selling 20% or so.

A Yeah, basically that. Um, and we, um, you know, we kicked off, we, we took the wraps off of our product in May. Uh, we started doing, As I said, a whole bunch of events and activations with our own customers. Um, that we have found is like an incredible way to fill the top of our funnel. Every time we do, uh, an event, every time we do programming or anything of that kind, we get hundreds of signups. Uh, we have never lacked for signups. We've From before we even launched or had a product, we've had a wait list. Um, so we started doing that. It went super well. Uh, we were kind of feeling out how we wanted to structure the company from here and decided that we wanted to raise a round. And, uh, so we started fundraising in, um, at the very end of April, uh, or at the beginning of May, uh, it took us about, um, took us about four to five weeks to get, uh, uh, Offers that we were interested in on the table and then a couple weeks after that to get things closed.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, basically that.”