My name is Nicole Jarbo, and I am the founder of Boost — a fintech company focused on serving Gen-Z freelancers, founders, and creators who have multiple income streams. 

We offer a comprehensive money management platform.

I am a serial entrepreneur with a background in education tech and fundraising businesses.

We recently raised a pre-seed round of $1.5M at a $6M post-money valuation.

I had already put a lot of time and money into this myself and I hit a point where I needed outside capital to keep going.

At first I had planned on asking for $250k, but one of my advisors said that if I was trying to convince investors that this is a big idea, I need to raise enough money to make a big idea happen.

Early stage investors want their investments to turn into 9-figure or 10-figure businesses — so I decided to ask for a $1M to start. 

We were still in the early stages so we had to build all of the infrastructure and software to host a money management platform.

We wanted to reach the capability to launch an MVP and actually serve customers before we had to raise again.

We focused a lot on building our brand from the beginning which can be quite costly.

We had very specific criteria for the investors we wanted to work with — I created a list of them and started reaching out to each of them.

As the process went along I realized I preferred to work with people with whom I had a warm introduction and some kind of existing relationship.

Those meetings always went better than the meeting with a cold start.

With the cold outreach I put together a list and emailed each of them trying to get a meeting. I asked them for introductions to other investors they thought might be interested.

Eventually I decided to just rely on my personal network for introductions.

We pitched to around 110 investors and 20% of those led to second meetings. 

We focused on the story and making sure the pitch deck was perfect.

Since we were at such an early stage the main thing investors were going to look at is the quality of the idea, the presentation, and the team.

I worked with friends and advisors who had raised money and done pitches to refine the whole presentation.

We gave every investor updates when we secured a new interested investor to get them to wonder if they are missing the deal.

We also send access to financial models and executive summaries.

Another tactic we used when it was time to close was sending the SAFE with wire instructions and telling them where to sign — even if they were still acting like they weren’t 100% in. 

Putting a binary decision in front of them will cause them to act.

Part of the fundraising process took place at the end of the COVID pandemic when all of these fundraising meetings were held virtually — this created a few challenges.

The meetings would be stacked up all day —you would go from meeting to meeting for hours in a row.

I had one meeting where the investor said he liked the idea but he did not like me. It’s tough to hear something like that.

Right after that meeting I had to completely restart with the same fresh energy I’d need to have for every other meeting.

I have a lot of experience in the nonprofit fundraising space so I am comfortable pitching people. When it is your own company, it is harder not to take rejection personally.

We had a lot of early success with market research that further confirmed our thesis that there was a market need for our product.

We sent out hundreds of surveys to creators and freelancers — people who can make money with their own creativity, but have less experience with the finance and operations side of business.

Showing that recurring pattern of responses from those survey participants gave us more momentum and validation that we could share with investors.

Sometimes you have to tell investors they are not the right fit, rather than waiting for them to tell you no — it can be difficult to execute this.

When you are raising money there is a strong pull towards pandering and trying to keep every opportunity alive.

Sometimes it is clear that they are not the right fit and it would be a waste of time to pretend the process is going to continue with them.

This does not mean burning a bridge, but rather gracefully saying now is not a good time to work together — if things change in the future you can talk again.

Precursor Ventures - Charles Hudson

For Fintech - Marcos Fernandez at Fiat Ventures

For women and people of color - Ruthless for Good Fund

The House Fund - Cal Alum

Symphonic Capital - Sydney Thomas

I think everyone getting ready to pitch should read Get Backed by Evan Baehr and Evan Loomis.