Fundraising, Mandatory Vacation, Next 90 Days

May 2021 Company Update

I sent this an unedited version of this email to our investors on June 8, 2021. Going forward, I plan on posting a lightly-edited version of our monthly investor update about a month after we share them with insiders.

Key Metrics as of June 7, 2021

Cash in Bank: $XXM
Monthly Burn: ~$120k
Headcount: 6 FTEs + 0.5 FT Contractor
Runway at current burn: YY months
Runway at planned burn: ZZ months

Highlights

Atypical leads Seed+ on $65M cap 

Atypical Ventures led a SAFE financing on a $65M cap / 10% discount. $2.9M is closed and another $1.2M is committed pending wires. Investors include:

• Marc Randolph (founder of Netflix)

• Matt Ocko (partner at Data Collective)

• Rob Stavis (partner at Bessemer)

• Greg Duffy (founder of Dropcam)

• Ken Hertz (connected Hollywood lawyer)

• Atypical Ventures (insider)

• Duro Ventures (insider)

• Rogue Capital (insider)

• Capital X (insider)

• Red Beard Ventures

I’ve stopped actively soliciting new investment and am switching my focus to product & hiring. That said, I do have a handful of conversations still in progress that might yield more cash. 

AngelList RUV FTW

We took in $361k from 42 investors and only added one line item to our cap table. How? By using AngelList’s new Rollup Vehicle product. I LOVE THIS PRODUCT. Made it so, so easy to take in individual checks from interesting angels, family, friends & even random angels I met at parties in Miami. Just email/text the person a link. 100% seamless. Cost the company an $8k setup fee, which was totally worth it. ***HIGHLY RECOMMEND****

Mandatory Vacation

We shut Oasis down for 10 days and forced everyone to go on vacation. I was even banned from posting on Slack. It was amazing. Now the whole team feels refreshed. 

The pandemic turned us into 24x7 workaholics. The team was always working late, always working weekends. The productivity was profound, but we started seeing signs of burnout a few months ago (eg with XXX’s sudden departure). In talking to the team, it was clear that we all needed a vacation.

Because of how tight we are as a team, we knew the only any one of us would actually be able take a vacation was if we all went on vacation simultaneously. If some people were still working, the temptation to check Slack, hop on email and generally not vacate would be too high. We care about each other & the company too much not to.

The experiment was a smashing success. I think we’re going to try to make this a company tradition. 

Knee Surgery (Finally!)

Remember how I blew out my knee skiing in February 2020 and wasn’t able to see a doctor until July? Well, I––finally––got ACL reconstruction surgery last Thursday. Now I’m constantly icing my knee, hobbling around and overall recovering more quickly than expected. Progress.

Lowlights

Not the $20M Series A I was hoping for

I was really thinking we’d raise $20M. Obviously, that did not happen and, tbh, I was a bit disappointed... until I talked to other founders who had fundraised recently. Lotta high fives when I told them the terms, so that made me feel better. Life is all a matter of perspective!

Clearly, the next step for us is to ship a product that gets traction, at which point I expect we’d be flooded with cash.

My biggest takeaway from this fundraise is to be more paranoid in general and less optimistic about the imaginative capacity of venture capitalists. 

I want to build a company that does not depend on venture capital for its life or success. Ironically, it will likely take more venture capital to get Oasis to the point where fundraising is an optional activity. But the last 3 months have left me with a deep desire to make stuff that prints money and doesn’t require the belief or permission of investors to survive. 

Next Up

Ship Product in 90 Days

With fundraising complete, our focus is now on shipping a product. The goal is to have an app on the App Store within 90 days. We’re working on synthesizing all our learnings this (inc some formal UX research) and finalizing a direction within the next 1-2 weeks. 

More to come on this soon...

What I’m Reading

A new study suggests that “Zoom fatigue” is worse for women than men

• note: We’ve been saying this at Oasis since 2019

Meet Miko. She’s a virtual streamer who doesn’t show her face.

Balaji on Avatars, Crypto & more (the Tim Ferriss podcast)

How Pixar uses hyper colors to hack your brain

Is content moderation a dead end?

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Ideas? Feedback? I’d love to hear ‘em. Email me back directly or book a time to chat.

Cheers!

-Matt