Excalicauldron: Through the Looking Glass - Issue #2
Didn’t expect to kick off my weekly scribing with what reads like a journal entry, but in documenting the process, this turned out to be how it reads.
If weeks have names, the last one’s christened Whirlwind. At AdLunam, we moved into our private fundraising round and it’s been one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had. Not to mention collecting data points on just how little sleep I can get away with (if I want to maintain my early-to-rise habit, 4am wrecks me).
Sprouting in the dark
It’s a weird thing, building a business in stealth mode and forming premature notions of the pace at which something will unfold based on the fact that hardly anyone knows you exist. Only for it to start hitting the market and realising you underestimated - by an exponential factor - just how well it’d be received. Starting out, you know you’re onto something. Your vision and product excite you like a newborn addition to the family - it’s the drive that allows you to keep building prior to receiving external market validation. As much as you keep the faith, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) creeps up and whispers that maybe, just maybe, you and everyone who knows and loves what you’re doing are a special flavour of misguided.
It’s not until you see your excitement and enthusiasm reflected in others that it really starts hitting home: You’ve given life to something, nurturing it in the dark. And now, like a rapid-fire growth spurt, it’s not only ready to have play dates, but start dating, too. And there’s no faster way to drive this home than to receive a whole bunch of money from strangers all over the world who decide to back your conviction that this new life will go on to flourish - and quickly.
How it started
After our team initiated the $500,000 seed round, I concluded that raising funds is a mood all on its own. It’s a mixture of elation and anguish; your heart doing acrobatic backflips at every win, only to feel it being torn from your chest when you least expect it (and have that happen often). If fundraising was a deity, Prometheus would be our guy. Doing something good for humanity (Look Ma, I stole fire!), only to have his perpetually regenerated liver pecked out by an angry eagle on the daily. The problem with early-stage founder dips - and oh boy, how low you can go - is that the rollercoaster is so constant you don’t realise how far into the abyss you fell until you bounce back up again.
So when we opened the private round towards the tail end of the week, I anticipated more of the same. In fact, since Private is raising $2m, four times as much. Instead, it turns out that fundraising isn’t just a mood - it’s an entire mood category. We pierced each other’s eardrums when we got our first yes. Our cries of joy were carried across the many countries that separate us as a remote team when the first funds landed in our account.
How it's going
At the time of writing, it’s been 4 days, and I had to look up who our first cheque even came from, because - seriously - whirlwind. I decided early on that justifying working till dawn cos we’re busy closing a $300,000 deal is setting the bar pretty damn high as far as valid reasons to work overtime’s concerned.
Not only did we raise funds so quickly that we had the ability to close the round 2 days in, but we’re oversubscribed (i.e. more investment offers than the allocated total available) by a crazy percentage. I’ve heard these things happen, I’ve been part of teams where this took place, but to be on the founder’s end… it’s a surreal experience. Like stepping through the wardrobe and finding yourself in Narnia.
We’ve raised from VCs (Venture Capitalists) who bought in without ever getting on the phone with us. After the number of pitches I did over the last few weeks, my vocal cords appreciated the reprieve, but initially, it was pretty unbelievable all the same. Alexander calls it the introvert founder’s dream: Proof that text trumps phone calls… even when handing someone hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A human being’s capacity to get used to something really frigging quickly is remarkable. Just when I wrapped my head around that, next level up was that VCs would invest without ever having seen our pitchdeck or tokenomics. They’d simply heard (via some secret investor grapevine I’ve yet to figure out) that AdLunam’s the hottest deal of the moment. And just like that, they’d offer sums that, a week ago, sounded like a lot. Yet, thanks to Whirlwind Week, you’d be surprised (like, very surprised) how fast this became just another bunch of zeros to us.
And then, you wouldn’t believe what happened next! <<< Me narrating an update to myself every few hours… we’d receive a message via a third party, which included a firm’s bio, their offer, and their SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) details. Apparently, not even exchanging texts need to apply.
Yet still, the surprises didn’t stop coming. As the average person would attest to, saying no to money is an idea that happens in movies. The main character, after a period of inner turmoil, decides that no, they’re not willing to sacrifice their soul after all, and so they turn down whatever opportunity of a lifetime drove the plot climax. I’m sure most of us have had moments when we went, “Not sure saying no to that was entirely necessary.”
Turns out that in real life - at least when you’re raising - it’s far easier… and common. Since our round is pre-capped at a certain number, anything above that has to be declined, and instead of accepting 100% of what is offered within the scope of our round, we very selectively accept a much smaller figure. Never did I think that I’d end up turning down a collective number running into the many millions of millions of dollars, but here we are. It’s come to roll off my tongue like I’m saying no to a fourth go at a buffet table.
On the ‘downside’, as nice as it is to receive money, SAFT burnout is real. Setting up your first few SAFTs are moments worthy of being burnt into memory, but at some point, you can do them in your sleep and you start longing for the days when your dreams involve more than just crunching numbers.
A special kind of (in)sane
Of course, these are all good (great) problems. Being showered with (offers of) institutional money is certainly a first-order problem to have. Being in a position of essentially ‘interviewing’ VCs the way you would a job candidate (and then some): “Why should we give you this opportunity to give us money? What value will you add?” Not something I’d previously imagined experiencing, as intimidating as the world of venture capital - even the sensationalised Shark Tank and co. show business versions - has always seemed.
Throughout all of this, the wild ride where scheduling calls with institutional investors would be “pencilled in” since we have no way of guaranteeing whether the round will still be open when the meeting time comes around, one thing has become crystal-clear. The bipolarity of the fundraising mood spectrum, where you vacillate between thinking you own the world and the despair of feeling like you’re being crushed by it… it’s not for the faint of heart.
I’m not really sure it’s “for” anyone, really. It’s not something you can truly prepare for unless you’ve had previous exposure - and here I definitely see the value of growing up with founder parents, which I didn’t, but which Alexander now gets to see first-hand (business school seat, worldschooling edition). Instead, in keeping with my standard life philosophy of jumping off a cliff and growing wings on the way down, you learn by doing. Only, this is at 100X the speed at which things usually happen for me or most people.
Having said that, I’m discovering pretty damn quickly that certain building blocks can make or break the foundation needed to take a stab at this and stay sane.
1. Be self-centered
The standard narrative is that self-centered = bad. However, while we’re taught not to be self-centered in the selfish sense of the word, society hasn’t much encouraged being centered in the self. The ebb and flow of daily living brings its own unique challenges to our overall well-being, but with the added dimension of leading a founder’s life - for which raising funds are a notable inauguration - you’d better have an anchor that doesn’t depend on market conditions or what your cap table (distribution of equity, or tokens in crypto) looks like.
A caveat: This “self” isn’t about pumping your ego, and centering yourself in it doesn’t imply serenading affirmations into the mirror. Rather, it involves a mindful detachment whereby you purposefully zoom out just enough to have one foot in the living of it all and the other in observing what’s happening. Otherwise, the tides will toy with you the way cats death-play their prey. There’s a difference between being all-in in terms of attitude and being all-in identity-wise. The former is crucial to the process. The latter can be terminal.
“In the war of ego, the loser always wins.”
Rightly or wrongly attributed to Buddha, it gets the message across. No matter what happens on the outside, don’t let that rule what’s on the inside. When it’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s catastrophic.
One foot in the world to allow you to engage, but enough healthy detachment to remind you that neither are you ultimately of the world (we’re all just a bunch of cells on a collision course with death), but this, too, shall pass (the good, the bad, the ugly, and the exquisite). Wear it like a raincoat, not a mask.
2. If you don't have time to meditate for one hour, meditate for two
This aphorism became a template into the mantra of the hour all week long:
“If you don’t have time for one massage a week, have two.”
“If you don’t have time for one call with a friend today, do two.”
“If you don’t have time for one social gathering this week, attend two.”
It’s difficult to battle the ‘sensible’ inner voice ever so gently castrating you for self-indulgence in the face of mountains of work to be done. Especially when it all demands doing right now, this minute.
Work-life balance is something I’ve struggled with throughout my career. I’ve always battled with sending self-care off to tomorrowland so I could work right here, now. I’m no stranger to the price you pay when those choices mount up and charge backdated fees. I’ve struggled with this both as an entrepreneur and as an employee. Sometimes I’d divorce one and start dating the other. A/B testing: Which role will make me work less and be more? Then, when the same patterns would be copy-pasted, I’d make the switch again. Some people build their careers strategically. I’ve pretty much just been chasing balance like it’s unobtainium.
This time around, I’m older, a smidgen wiser, and painfully familiar with burnout (again and again and again). I doubt I could’ve undertaken the monumental task of running a company of this magnitude at any time in the past. Not in terms of qualifications or competence. Nay, it would’ve swallowed me whole straight away, and pretty soon it would’ve been difficult to determine any kind of delineation between myself and the business.
‘They’ say that this is the type of founders investors want: People so obsessed with taking an idea to the top that they’re willing to sacrifice everyone and everything - including themselves. And while on paper this sounds like a deal with the devil few would be silly enough to sign, in practice, it happens even without investor pressure, but all the more so when millions of dollars are involved and the rollercoaster highs are addictive enough to keep enduring the excruciating lows.
Apart from the crucial role your value system plays - an anchor if ever there was one - it’s exactly this reason why it’s so crucial to always be taking good care of yourself across all dimensions…you never know when it’s the only lifeline keeping you going.
If you don’t have time to meditate for one hour, meditate for two.
Let's continue the conversation
As far as I understand (haven’t tried this out yet), if this newsletter landed in your inbox, you can simply hit reply and it’ll go straight to mine. Since I explained last week why it’s Facebook bye-bye for me, I’m exploring ways to still stay connected. Not sure if email’s the way to go (haven’t we been trying to kill it for a while now 🤔), but maybe it’s begging for a retro comeback.
Till next week! x