Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Raising a Friends & Family Round with Ghia founder Melanie Masarin

Transcript

GEMS: Raising a Friends & Family Round with Ghia founder Melanie Masarin · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  Something that I love to talk about is sort of more in the money side of things. And I know you guys did a friends and family round. And something that I'm really eager to learn about is how you actually do a friends and family round. What are the steps? You know, is it an email? Is it text messages? What's the like, what are the steps to launching a friends and family round? Yeah, it was a bit of both. And, you know, we raised our round in October 2019, which feels so exciting.
• 0:37
  far away. It's a completely different world from the one that we live in now. But what I did first is I started, as I was doing my research, I started, you know, tapping some people and entrepreneurs that I admire in my network to kind of get their advice. What did they think of it? How do you even vet an idea other than the gut feeling? And I'm a very intuitive person. So I'm like, this one feels right, you know, but it's like, how do you know when it's the one? Like, does it make any business sense? Is there anything to look out for?
• 1:05
  And so I reached out to a few people, one of them being Jennifer Rubio, the founder of OA, and a few other founders that either I had worked for before. And I just really asked them for advice. I told them the idea. We didn't have a name. We didn't have a deck. We didn't have anything. It was, you know, so I reached out to Emily Weiss and I reached out to Jen Rubio and I reached out to a few others. And they all...
• 1:31
  I could tell I was so excited by it. And I think they had all worked with me before or seen my work before. And they said, do it. I'll invest. And I think that was the vote of confidence that I needed. It was those first checks from these really admirable entrepreneurs that have done so well.
• 1:49
  And that were also, you know, good anchors for me to be able to go out to people that I didn't know as well and say, we already have, you know, commitments from these people that whose judgment you probably trust, you know, more than mine. So then we put it back together, really talking about.
• 2:05
  The opportunity, you know, and there's not a ton of research on non-alcoholic drinks because you have alcohol and then you have sodas. And so we were trying to create a new category, which is very different. But the reality is, I think a lot of people resonated with this idea of like trying to cut down on drinking, but not having options. So sometimes the big idea really, you know, you get to convince people with the very practical details. And it was like asking questions such as,
• 2:32
  When does it make sense to socialize but not be drunk? So many occasions. And so we put a deck together and we reached out to people individually, people that I had worked with in the past and then just friends that I knew were investing in.
• 2:47
  And you really have to put yourself out there. Thankfully, we weren't raising a lot of money. And so we ended up just scheduling a number of meetings. And some of the people that had decided to invest also referred us to some of their friends. So it was very kind of friends and family and then friends of friends. And we ended up raising around in a week. So I did something like 50 or 60 meetings in the week, just back to back to back to back. And then by the following Monday, we had all of the money that we needed and more, which...
• 3:17
  was very lucky given I think it's much harder to raise money today, but it went quickly. Wow. That is so crazy to achieve in a week. Did you have to, once you had all the commitments from the different people, what happens next? Like, do you have to hire a lawyer to be like, okay, we're going to draw up a million contracts. Do you just shoot out your bank details and be like, Hey, here we go. What's the actual step there?
• 3:45
  Pretty much, actually. So we decided to open a safe note. It was easy and it was the least expensive one in terms of legal fees. And we hired a lawyer. And we ended up... People are like, okay, I'm in for $25,000 or $50,000. And you end up sending them your wire information and a safe note that they'll sign and that you'll sign and counter-execute when you get the money, basically. So it's pretty simple.
• 4:14
  Wow, must have been so thrilling. I love that. So cool. Congrats, by the way. Related congrats.
• 4:23
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• 4:48
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• 5:10
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