This is on top of crafting the pitch deck, the pitch itself, the data room, answering all the questions someone might ask, and more. Once I figured out cold outreach wasn’t working, my job became all about scheduling meetings, chasing people, keeping on top of email threads, and more. It wasn’t worth it because 98% of the time they don’t. I spent so much time applying through VC websites, because I thought that someone was actually looking at them on the other end.
For example, one thing that took up time was identifying our investors and company fit. Lea: It’s hard - much harder than I thought it was going to be. Can you break down what goes into it for future first-time founders? Founders say fundraising is a full-time job. Wow! You have to get creative when you’re bootstrapped. We’d then recommend that the company educate their managers to be more proactive with celebrating wins and giving feedback and share some partners who could support with training and workshops. We help companies prevent disengagement and attrition, and improve their culture and employee satisfaction with actionable steps based on anonymized data.įor example, we track how employees feel about eight key areas of workplace satisfaction. They’re expensive to recruit, expensive to train, and expensive to retain. One of the big issues for employers is the cost of staff. We help employees navigate their careers with clarity and confidence through bite-sized exercises and personalized insights on Slack. Lea: JRNY is your personal career coach that lives on Slack, powered by AI. Let’s start with your elevator pitch for JRNY.
In this Q&A, Lea breaks down the fundraising process for first-time founders, and shares her secrets to finding and connecting with the right investors. They’re currently seeking to raise £500,000 in a pre-seed round. The product is in beta and currently onboarding early customers. It also enables companies to coach teams in a highly scalable way. Through daily bite-sized exercises and on-demand access to coaching, JRNY helps users show their careers who’s boss and have better conversations with their managers.
Think Duolingo meets Headspace for career coaching on Slack. Bootstrapped in 2021 by founder and CEO Lea Marolt Sonnenschein, JRNY is a personal career coach powered by AI and human curation.