How do you pivot your startup twice after raising $3M?

welcome to episode 37 of fundraising demystified today we have Sheri Jang with us founder and CEO of peak money a consumer ftac app based in Singapore where she is taking the best practices from the US market and going after the untapped Southeast Asian Sherry shares her Dynamic experience and story of leaving Google working on Google pay to offer a much needed netw worth tracker for the Asian markets she raised 3 million leveraging small Angel checks to start that led to intros to bigger checks she explains how after raising her business has pivoted multiple times to find product Market fit she talks about keeping her burn low to get as many shots on goal as she can get Sherry's story is the untold story of many Founders still in the thick of building and figuring out the next stage of their company it was a pleasure having her on the show and kidly sharing her real life experience navigating startup life in Southeast Asia as a reminder to get notified of our weekly podcast and newsletter be sure to subscribe at join. thunder. 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BC now out to the show hey everyone welcome back this is Jason Kirby of fundraising demystified today we have sherry Jen with us today the co-founder and CEO of blue J Finance welcome to the show Sherry thanks Jason glad to be here no we're excited to have you here uh you have a pretty interesting story as we were talking offline before coming in there's a lot of really interesting pieces that I think a lot of Founders that kind of that seed you know preseries a stage might take from from today's show so before we dive into all the specifics how about you just give the audience a little bit about you your background and what you're building at Blue J absolutely um so as mentioned I'm Sherry I'm the one of the co-founders of bluej uh we're incubating a series of product solving Personal Finance Management um I have actually live in Singapore even though I was born and raised in the US but uh back when I was at Google um I took a bit of a bet that the next billion users coming online are going to come from markets like India Indonesia and just moved myself to Singapore to work for the team here um was a pretty interesting Journey was super glad to be part of a product that actually grew from a new product to over a 100 million users in India in just three years so in a way it was a bit of a startup experience I'd say within Google but of course with a lot less risk than I would say of than actually doing a startup um which I think I decided after that experience I mean I just have to follow it up with probably the biggest career risk I took which is basically leaving Google um the comfort of Google and and starting my own company now uh in terms of what we are doing today with blue jay uh one of the challenges that I noticed among my peers and actually with myself as well is that um our financial lives are becoming a lot more complicated um I'm an expat I have have 18 accounts in the US and Singapore brokerage accounts bank accounts Etc um and uh you know people have different types of asset classes that they're investing in as well like Alternatives Etc yet we haven't really had a huge rehaul of the way we're managing that money right we're still using Excel um I was sporadically updating it sometimes incorrectly sometimes with you know different timestamps and it's difficult to get a singular view right it's like you know if you don't have a view of your health metrics at the doctor you don't really know what's going on with your you know Health life I mean that's the same thing that happens with people with their financial lives and so that's the area that we're really looking to solve with our new product called Peak within the blue jay Suite so essentially what Peak is is an intelligent net worth tracker um with coverage across the globe in terms of asset classes and on top of that we want to build personalized insights to help you basically make better financial decisions very interesting well I find personally very valuable I deal with managing I probably have probably 40 50 accounts myself it's an absolute disaster between my wife and I trying to track everything there's like tried mint for a while but they're like oh we're shutting that down uh I heard yeah uh so you very interested to kind of learn more about the the approach that you're taking with Peak but um before we dive maybe into more specifics about uh blue J and the and the app and the technology that you're building be really curious to kind of hear the founding story of why did you take the leap of faith to to leave Google the the Kush you know cozy life uh to to kind of try something completely new and on your own and and being from America and starting a in a new country and sing you're living there working at G you have some context of the environment but yeah yeah pretty big pretty big bold bet so I'm curious as to what led you to to do that yeah um I think there's of multiple layers to this I mean I think one part of it is that I always had an entrepreneurial bug in me um even while I was working at Google so I never founded I would say like a commercial Enterprise but during my time there I actually founded and ran an NGO um that basically helped link engineering Talent with NOS across Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area it was kind of one of those things where um I realized that a lot of the tech stack for NOS is was relatively mentary and um I knew a lot of Engineers had have had free time and wanted to volunteer in an impactful way so just kind of got started and ran with it so in a way um I guess that entrepreneurial bug um especially linked with some kind of social Mission um has always been there right but I was just looking for the right opportunity to to take the leap and I felt like at the time I was at Google it was six years right I'm like I've gotten a good amount of professional experience to feel confident in my own abilities but I was still in a place in my life personally where I could take a lot of risk right I just still still a single player world with me so I was kind of like you know what let me just take the leap right so there's one part that you know the bug was there I was looking for the right time I felt like it was a perfect balance of like Risk appetite and I guess professional experience and then I'd say the third piece of it that motivated me was I felt like there were more things I wanted to do within Google pay that uh which is the team I was on that I felt constrained uh I basically felt constrained at a certain point um during the first few years on the team because we were small and relatively entrepreneurial I can propose an initiative get it approved by Wednesday executed on Friday and it was super fun very interesting but towards the end I felt like you know my continuous drive to improve the product was kind of pit against the I mean the the inevitable bureaucracy that comes with big Tech right as Google pay became this mature product so one example of this frustration that happened with me was I was really trying to push initiatives to increase the percentage of women that were using Google pay because that number was 14% And I'm like that's women are 50% of the population right and so that's a big Market opportunity so I I I really pushed for you know the leads to kind of explore for different product as well as marketing Avenues to to to kind of improve this number right if this were my own company I could have made this the sole initiative right but I had to deal with basically the entire mass of stakeholder management that comes with with Google so I I felt like I couldn't really pursue what I felt like was important for a product vision and so I think for all those reasons I took the leap now it wasn't always easy to be honest right um this happened in the middle of 2021 um it was still covid in Singapore um it we were in and out of like having only one person or two people in a room type of situation but it was still very isolating right so uh it was very I would say initially difficult leaving the comfort of the Google Safety Net and Community right I I won't lie about that but I think the active effort to cultivate that new community among new St SE stage Founders in Singapore was actually what kept me kind of going and you know feeling like I wasn't on this journey uh completely alone so the other question you I guess talked a little bit about was you know why why take this bet on Asia um you know I'm I am I started my a career actually in the valley funny enough right and then I'm starting a company in Asia um I think a big part of it is this belief that this region as an ecosystem is going to grow in a disproportionate way um just looking at GDP metrics the growth of the middle class metrics like it's it's going to grow disproportionately compared to other regions right is it more difficult to start a company in Singapore than it is maybe in the valley absolutely right I mean I I I think that's the reality it's it's not there's challenges and I can definitely go into details around that piece um but I think what is what makes me um want to build here is this feeling that I'm not just building for my company and my product but like what I do has a has positive externalities for the ecosystem at large right like if I'm able to do something that you know motivates someone else to build here that's that's how you build an ecosystem right and I feel like there's something Beyond just myself and my company here so in a way that's I I'd say partly motivating um for me to to build out here it's like the bet on the region and then the role I play as not just a company Builder but an ecosystem Builder that's pretty impressive actually when you think about the complexity of the new market taking that that risk but what I noticed about what you did here is you really focused on building Community when Community was rare like you you're dealing with Co you're dealing you know with distance from people you're not being able to build like real in real life relationships but it sounds like you're really kind of taking a leap of faith to you know Foster that type of community and be a part of that Community uh and also the Bold bat in Asia like I don't think anyone can disagree with you in terms of the the growth rate there versus you know in terms of adoption of new technology population so on where that's you know on a slower more mature status here in the US um so you have this kind of story of why you leave you know Google you have kind of this mission to empower more women to use you know ftech and you know payments and things of that sort so walk us through the conception of blue J and kind of the founding story and you know who was on with you who was with you on that Journey yeah absolutely well um we definitely had our twists and turns um and one thing that I tell people is like 90% of the time the idea that you write on your napkin the day you're like I am going to be a Founder I'm going to build this 90% of the time it's not going to be what you build right so um I I like to start out by saying that like um I I don't know if you've heard of this like go uh I think it's called the Golden Circle com concept but basically there is the why how and what um as a entrepreneur you need to have the why clear like what is your purpose what is your company's purpose and the what around it is going to change right because you just need to adapt to the realities of the market once you know the the wheels actually touch the ground on on the ground reality right so you know when I started out on this journey I mean I knew that like I broadly wanted to solve um you know a problem within you know teeken Financial inclusion right I wanted somehow to you know use new technologies to be able to democratize either Investments or payments or something in this broad area right but like there that that mission at the core was there um so I when I um started this journey I actually joined an accelerator program here in Singapore uh called entrepreneur first I don't think they're in the US so it's not um it's more of a I think london-based uh accelerator but essentially um you join as a Founder uh without your product or team and you basically meet your co-founder um and that's how I actually met my first co-founder and CTO was through this program which is think of it as like speed dating and arranged marriage if I were to be very honest right you like barely know each other but you're like hey like let's start a company together and just like see if this crazy idea actually pans out right I mean it's it's a again a bit of a it it's very meta but it was a risk I took on the risky process already right to to kind of go through this which I can go into more detail um but I decided to work with um my first co-founder um for two main reasons um number one we had complimentary skills um he was a very good engineer he can cover the technical aspects and then my background really was around how to be a translation layer between this new tech and the average person right so that kind of was quite compliment I think the second piece that you know we connected at the time really deeply on was this desire to you know kind of bet big and you know do something category defining right like we were like let's not do just a small Niche you know SAS product which is fine that's no no saying not saying that that's not a good idea but we're like let's find a way to be category defined right and so there's that dream big aspect of things so initially what we were actually building for a while uh was actually um stable coins in the web 3 Market which sounds I think quite different than what I do today very different very different right um and so how we got to this point was we saw stable coins as basically the new money layer that can actually uh eliminate more of the inefficiencies that happen within payments within investments in the Fiat world so one application that we were really excited about was actually how stable coins um denominated to non USD current can actually reduce the remittance fees that happen especially in a region like southeast Asia where I mean money travels across the borders all the time I mean in the Philippines like a significant percentage of the GDP is actually based on remittances coming in the country yeah people are paying like five s% um fees on it just because the the whole system is is not entirely efficiently designed or the at least the incumbents are not necessarily incentivized there to reduce those kind of costs right so so that was the first I would say version of Blue Jay right was was stable coins and that's what we went out and raise money with this was back in early 2022 to 20 uh mid 2022 so we had that typical experience of like here's the deck and vision of what we want to do and kind of Reinventing the money system in in Southeast Asia with stable coins and we were able to kind of raise off of that right um now we I would say there were two things that were some headwinds for us in 2022 um some were I would say beyond our control that were very exogenous and then some I would say are were related to how we were defining our product too and I'll get to both of them right um I think number one was uh after the collapse of terol Luna a stable coin that major stable coin back in May of 2022 um it just I would say created a very uh it created widespread skepticism around stable coins in general right and again like there's uh good reasons for why that happened right because a lot of these models were not necessarily the most sustainable and were only propped up because of the bull market in crypto during that time so that was one headwind and then the second one came when we actually launched our stable coin in November which was the collapse of FTX one of the biggest exchanges at the time so in some ways it was like we were trying to fight this uphill battle of launching and building traction for this when basically there was just so little liquidity that we can tap into to even make this possible right so so that was one challenge I think the other challenge which is a learning for myself as a Founder is that um starting with a broad concept of a market and an idea can be quite chenging right it's I think intellectually as a Founder you can think of any kind of future and justify it in your head right but the real I guess the the the the real piece really starts when you have your first second or third customers no matter how Niche or small that beach H head may be but it's almost like you need to also have that Bottoms Up reality as well and we also were having trouble figuring out how to actually distribute this and go to market I mean we had a universe of different kind of integration Partners we wanted to work with but at the end of the day we felt like we weren't solving their deepest problems enough for it to be exciting and so that was that was that was also a big challenge so from that point on we then had to think about what we what we're going to do right so we did something what something that I call a pivot out of necessity now what that means is okay the ideal pivot is you have a hinge right basically you have like if you think of a pivot it's like a hinge right you're not just aimlessly going another Direction and most of the time um you know if it's based on like a user Insight that's great so I think slack had an interesting pivot where they were like a gaming company right but they built a um sorry yeah completely opposite yeah no no pivot not a not on a h yeah yeah actually I would argue that they had a bit of a hinge that was not related to their product but they built an internal Communications tool for themselves and they're like okay like this this actually might be useful for other teams like ours right and then that became slack so that I guess the hinge there wasn't the product but the hinge was basically you know a tool that they were building internally which happens more often than you think um when it comes to pivots right so um our pivot was basically hey we think that the stable coin Market is tough but some of our integration partners are playing in interesting areas that maybe we can actually compete with in Asia right because we started to understand their Market better um and then decided to actually uh make a play there so we actually pivoted out of necessity like we just had to go somewhere right keep momentum going somewhere and decided to get into um building what the crypto World calls real world assets but I would say in normal speak it's basically an Alternatives ass alternative assets investment platform uh based on blockchain infrastructure but all you have to think about is it's a it's a way for you to invest in Alternatives like credit um high yield fixed income Etc and the reason why stable coins played into this is because they were actually a fundamental money layer for people to actually invest into it on the blockchain right and people ask like why do you do it on the blockchain well it's the ability to kind of fractionalize some of these Investments that opens up the markets to actually retail investors right versus institutional investors so we actually were at this for about nine months so we launched we were in a quarter so q1 of 23 um we built the product we launched it basically in Q2 and then ran with that business for nine months right now during running this business which by the way grew we did have traction um but I made I made a deeper realization actually while while we were doing this um and it it's what actually gave me pause on what we should do next in the in the latter part of last year um number one we felt like as we were talking to our users and potential users of this platform who are I would say uh retail investors a lot of them work in big Tech um I would say accredited investors SL slightly less some of them but we realized that um access wasn't the biggest issue right our our thesis was okay people want access to Alternatives the big issue is access but we were realizing that like a lot of people didn't really know exactly how to make their investment decisions they're like 10% sounds great but like how much of my portfolio should I put into it when should I put it um and so we realized that like actually there's this whole universe of the dec like solving the decision making behind finance that isn't really addressed well everyone is trying to build investment platforms to get people to invest money right so it was a deeper problem that we found by talking to users of our platform and I don't think we could have discovered that unless we had that product right which is why I think sometimes you just have to go a direction and then you might be able to hit upon something so finally where we are at today right in the beginning of q1 um we have a direction that you know we we don't exactly know like how it's going to play out yet we you know we have a beta where launching at the end of March but we have almost 200 people that actually have signed up on our wait list um for the beta um indicating any number of things like I've been looking for a product like this for a long time and I haven't really been able to find one or I really hate updating my spreadsheet you know every that every single month or every single quarter or I feel like I don't really even know where all my accounts are and one time I discovered an account of 30k that was just sitting somewhere that I hadn't seen in a while right and so we're feeling like we're on to something um now I'm pretty I'm I'm pretty excited about what the future is to hold but it took us basically this entire journey to get to the point that we're at and um with each pivot I mean we learned a ton um and I don't think we could have gotten here without actually having each of those different bends so I know that was a bit long but um I'm happy to get into any area um around that so there's a couple points I want to unpack here so we see kind of the full timeline of leaving Google conceptualizing an idea having your why to um you know getting to where you are today but there's a couple things that we kind of glossed over that I want to dive deeper into sure we raised $3 million on the stable coin idea yeah um how how did you raise the money how did you you know it was definitely a tough time to raise money for anything crypto or blockchain or stable related did you know that most Founders waste days of their lives chasing the wrong investors as a Founder you know your time is your most valuable resource don't waste it on the investors that aren't going to write you a check here at Thunder we built a free tool that identifies exactly which VCS are worth your time to pursue we score your company against 3500 VCS and family offices that have been vetted and are actively writing checks in to companies like yours get 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VC now let's get back to the show so how did you what kind of process did you run what how did you find these investors and you raed three billion like that's a you know sizable chunk of change for this stage that you were at so how how did you pull that off Jason I I do feel like a lot of it was Brute Force if I would to be very honest but um you know I was learning about the fundraising process while fundraising as well right so just a little bit of context um this was still kind of in the middle of covid which meant um going to Meetup or meeting investors casually for coffee or traveling to conferences was just like not really in the equation so you had to get a bit creative I mean maybe I'll I basically like looked at any and always to meet people that could connect me to investors um I'll give you some examples I had a friend that knew someone who was an angel investor in crypto and mentioned casually that they were going to the beach over the weekend so I was like you know what I'm going to t along and meet him at the beach this was on a weekend and he ended up investing in our company and introducing me to four investors but it was like just looking out for any opportunity for an introduction at that point because you couldn't really meet people in Mass um I also can I pause you real quick I so you knew he was an angel investor going to the beach but he didn't know you were a Founder looking for money he had he didn't know who who the hell I was I mean I just basically was like you know what like let me let me just try to open up a conversation I'm sure it'll come up and if he's interested like he'll indicate it right and and so that's that's that's really how it was I mean I kind of that's the secret that's what I want to po poke at a little bit more uh because you didn't go like hi I'm Sherry I have a startup and I'm doing that you know yeah you you you met him in a safe unrelated space correct that was more about building relationships having fun you have some credibility worked at Google like anyone works at Google you get like you get a little check box of like okay you're safe and legit um and so there's a credibility there but then you focus more like if the topic comes up yeah I will you know then we'll like engage but you're not going to like force it on on the person to like corre yeah so I think this is something that's really crucial I want to hit on for our audience is you know being able to really think about the relationship and allowing things to come up naturally as opposed to you know going straight into like a 60-second elevator pitch on you know why you're raising money especially out of the context of raising money now someone wants to ask you and be inquisitive like oh you seem interesting oh what do you do like and then that kind of stuff happens great I just like like you made it seem like it was so natural but you w you were strategic and how you did it so Kos to you but to it's it's something that I think a lot of Founders don't realize how important that is uh to kind of come off more naturally and as if you're building a relationship and trying to meet people outside of the context of the fundraise to build a more organic relationship where the defenses are down and they're you know more likely to be focused on meeting someone new not necessarily like should I invest in you so I just wanted to call that out because I I want to compliment you on that I I absolutely agree with that by the way um and um a little side like suggestion for anybody is um find natural ways of meeting people where like you feel comfortable and it's also not just a Founder investor context so one thing that um I do regularly um is actually I I I play poker in the scene in Singapore um it's something I really enjoy and I mean inadvertently I have met investors through it and like most of the time I wasn't pitching at all I closed my round right but several of them actually have reached out like oh like you know I saw that you are doing this company just want to like grab a casual coffee and like get to know you and you know it it's it's been a good conversation I tell them I'm obviously not raising at that point but you know it's uh it's a it's a way for you to get to know people and obviously you know uh don't don't be like a degenerate Gambler when you're playing poker meeting investors I mean that might lead to some not so positive conclusions they have about you and your decision- making but if it's something you enjoy like go for it um golf is another thing but you know there's there's other ways to meet people than the most obvious right like go go for something that you know feel very comfortable in your own skin doing that you know leads to introductions that could be helpful later on preferably things that cost a little bit more money for some reason I noticed that it's like you you you want expens the more expensive the hobby the more natural it is for you to run into someone that has money it's well like yeah exactly we'll go down that um that but um all right so you got some angels you have a little bit of money in the door you know but you're still raising three million like yeah how did you get the rest of the capital and what was your what was your process I mean it it really was just this network effect right it was like so my the biggest check that came in was nearly $1 million um that came from yeah just linking the the introductions it came from a Founder in crypto who was an entrepreneur for my incubator so he was in a previous cohort I met him because he was like Hey I want to help you out he introduced me to his angel investor who then and both of them actually ended up investing in my round and then the second investor he introduced me to that angel from um Amsterdam he was like hey you should meet this investor and then that's actually how we got our first large check in the round which actually drove the momentum of the round that came in like I would say week three so week one to two was a lot of these like smaller Angel checks right so one thing I actually do tell people sometimes is like you you might feel like oh like 10,000 15,000 Angel checks is not very scalable like it's a lot to go through those conversations I just want to go for the 1 million check I would say like start with those right like you'd never know what happens like those guys become can become your biggest Advocates because um you know they they are investing normally because of some you know personal connection that they have with you as a Founder which is a lot easier than let's say an Institutional Investor and they can be your Advocate with funds that invested in their company so these guys again were also Founders right so that's um you know one thing that I kind of learned about the process but it did take a lot of these small meetings and I remember like I didn't have more than a 100K committed initially because it was all these smaller checks and so you get these Angel checks they start opening up new doors you start getting bigger checks and and things start to to come together you close your round it took I think you mentioned it took about five months or so kind of rolling closed yeah um but then you pivot yeah what how do you communicate that hey guys guys thanks for the money yeah for doing X but now I'm doing Y how did that conversation go um it's difficult I mean I would say um but I I think what's important is to focus on providing a good reason for the pivot almost as strong as your initial pitch to them right like think about all the questions that they would have how big is the addressable Market what's their commercialization model what are the insights all of that and basically you have to prove that what the direction that you're going is better than the direction that you were previously on and if you want to generate shareholder return for yourself as a Founder this is the best way to go which will also generate returns for them so I think it's important to to paint the story right I think um the idea of pivoting comes with a lot of it it comes with a lot of shame I would say in the startup Community right it feels like you know it's a failure of some sort like you know you were on a track you change your mind like do you not have conviction right as a Founder if you're changing your mind right but linking back to that like Golden Circle concept right I think you still need to you know State your intention of why you're doing this and why like the what's around it the product may need to change depending on Market reality right Market reality was that stable coins were extremely hard to bootstop liquidity for like it was just very difficult right and so I highlighted like the learnings that we had and then presented basically basically what's you know the next direction to come and almost like repitch it to the investors right now um I would say that it's it's a it's entirely possible that your investors are going to understand the pivots and what you're doing less and less because they invested with a probably a better understanding with the initial company that you had than it is with you know what you're doing um you know this point on forward right but I think what really critical is to is to communicate right um and not shy away from that conversation right you you you you talk about why you're doing it repitch it you also communicate like what exactly do you need to see to show whether or not this is working or not right over what time period um and just be really honest and following back up um and at the end of the day I I tell the investors right like I I didn't quit Google to do something that I don't think is going to be a wild success right I'm also a big shareholder here the best chances of all of us succeeding in my view is to go down this path which I have high conviction for and let's check in at certain points in time and discuss where the metrics are lining up think that's an incredibly professional way to handle the relationship and I imagine was this a inperson conversation was this like a you know Zoom meeting or was it like an email how did you and and did you do every single investor or just kind of the bigger ones just the bigger ones I mean we had 30 investors so so I mean it's kind of a lot to go to every single one of them so um it it's mainly just starting with the big ones right um I mean they're the most invested in your company therefore they have almost a like I guess bigger priority order in figuring out what's going on so uh for them I mean we did a zoom call um my investors are not in Singapore so I mean in person is a little bit logistically difficult I would say um every time there's a big update if I had to fly I would probably not spend as much time building my product right which is a problem um and then other folks it's it's an email update with uh you know open Communication channel if they so wish to schedule a call in chat right which I'm always open to um so so that's how I've handled it um now I you know I think uh everyone has a different way of doing it but I would say that um in the case of having a lot of investors I think it's okay to pick and choose and just have a few that you want to start out with because um at the end of the day like you should be like I should be on 30 customer calls and not 30 investor calls for my business that's great way to look at it and I think you you present a case that's basically what you approach you like you had a hypothesis you ran the test you looked back at it didn't didn't turn out to be an accurate uh assumption and so you def find a new hypothesis and move forward and as long as you kind of Follow That scientific method it's kind of hard to argue you know again unless you're making things up but doesn't sound like exactly be scientific about it right I mean like like if you lead with just gut and feeling then you're going to get opinions in response right like and that's not very productive I think for a lot of people instead you lead with data and then present what conditions need to be true or not true to continue and then they're like okay your your thinking sounds right let's just see how it goes right that's so that's how I would approach it so you pivot from The Original Cry uh stable coin then you go to kind of like the private credit alts on the blockchain concept and somewhere along the way you mentioned your first co-founder I thought that was a unique language to use so I guess walk me through what what that meant what happened to your first co-founder and uh and and how did you replace them and bringing a new co-founder yeah absolutely so um around August of 2023 um we basically hit a two-year like Mark with our startup and a common narrative or at least story I was hearing not just with our company with with other companies is that when people hit that Mark they start to think how would running this company for the next 10 years look right maybe in the beginning you're like let's just see how this goes for two years right and why when you hit two years then you re-evaluate if your own values what you care about what you want to do and get out of it can change right and especially now you're looking at it from this long-term perspective like what would it what would going down this road look like and I think my CTO had a realization that this was not what he wanted to continue with with from a from multiple perspectives right and and I this was a pretty amicable conversation I would say and we're very lucky that we actually had a startup coach work with uh our team during the whole process like you know I had someone to basically third party independent person you know balc ideas around about the situation and they also had that Resource as well so I definitely think that helped um but you know we were we we try to be very kind of mature about it right I think um you know we have to realize that founding a company is a big deal like it is a sacrifice it is a tradeoff in the entirety of your life right it's not just your job but it's like you know your your finances your your personal life and so I think for him he realized that he didn't see a path forward where he was as excited about the space I mean he one of the things that um I can share that he realized is that he um maybe didn't want to work on this you know venture-backed startup with a lot of stakeholders investors and work on a category defining product right that was the original one of the original values that we aligned on but he ultimately said that actually I'd be happy doing a Services business or working on a product that had 10 customers right and as long as they're all happy and I'm generating Revenue that's fine with me right and so there was a mismatch in that I guess Outlook and I think that's okay right because a lot of I don't think everyone should have to think of VC back startup is the only route to doing a company and I think he only realized that after doing it right and having to answer to 30 you know shareholders right and um you know that that was I think a a realization for him so um after we decided on the I guess exit plan right um I decided to actually um you know I guess officially uh promote my third co-founder so it's it's a bit of a I guess um interesting scenario where like we have a third co-founder that had actually been there with us since day one um he was actually in the accelerator program that my CTO and I were in um but for personal reasons he actually couldn't join the startup until about a year in um because he was actually fleeing uh Myanmar during the coup um so he needed to have a stability and a p in Singapore because he wanted to get him and his wife out of the country right and you can't really promise stability until you re raise $3 million right in a fundraising round so um I brought him on board after things kind of settled with our fundraising right but he was always I guess in a way um an unofficial co-founder in a way it's like we we never really fully figured out what the structure of it was but you know he was like look um I'm a third time founder I care about this team and this product you know I'll just do I'll contribute you know in however way you want and what with whatever title right um but after the exit of my first co-founder um I'm basically in a process of making it much more official that this is my you know this it's the two of us right so that's the situation that we we have no it we no one really we don't get this opportunity to really talk a lot about kind of the co-founder makeup and how important it is and it sounds like you had some very amicable uh situation with the other co-founder that had to step away and uh give Mutual understanding and I will double down on the coach or Mentor board member whoever the third party is to kind of mediate a Founder engagement in this type is so important I've seen many other companies that ones that didn't have it and the ones that didn't have it and definitely wants to have some kind of mediator so that be like a code it just needs to be that kind of trusted Mutual party involved that has some kind of interest in the outcome of you know the two parties working it out uh so it's great that you have that resource to to tap into um so you go through quite a bit but I want to comment on the fact that because you raised three million which you know it seems like a lot at the stage that you guys are at when you raised it um but that has appeared to last you through these moments so I guess how did you sustain the operations how did you manage burn and kind of what was your mindset in terms of managing your cash flow uh from that Capital raise which has you know obviously been almost two years now yeah um I think the biggest thing for us is to maintain frugality as a startup I mean I know that sounds so basic but like there were so many companies I knew that were like just like wasting so much on marketing before they really had a solid thesis around Pro product segment fit people overpaying themselves as Founders I mean like I don't know I think this is crazy but I don't think someone should be making a quarter of million dollars before there's Revenue at the company especially as a Founder right you want to make that money go work at meta or Google right I mean that's like that's just how the world works that in my view right that you should not be spending money doing those things so uh we number one just did not spend wastefully which sounds basic uh number two is that we were actually very careful about risk managing our money as well so a lot of people actually um in in the Advent of like you know the crypto collapses like lost money because they had it on FTX or had it in other places right and um we were always like let's put it in different places and diversify so if there's no single point of failure right so we didn't at we didn't hit this existential like like moment of losing our funding because you know we weren't risk managing that properly um and I think the the third piece is you know I I think of spend um at least right now in this basically with this equation right we have a base level of operations that is necessary and that is six full-time people across product design you know business and and the founders right anything above this that we hire I need to have a path towards that's going to generate more Revenue right that's it's a simple equation for me if that doesn't generate more Revenue we don't hire and you know spend on the head count um head counts right now our biggest expense so because of this I mean our burn is pretty low I I I can be pretty upfront about it it's you know hovering around 50k a month uh sometimes a little bit higher or lower depending on what we're doing but that's that's what we're doing and that's why you know we've been able to like survive right I mean and and be able to survive for actually into 2020 right which gives us actually time to actually figure out you know where the where where we have the best chance of winning in terms of a product right um and why I could actually have the freedom to make the decision I did to change directions last year because we still have time right to to to kind of find that product Market fit so I think that's incredibly important right as a as a Founder that you might think that capital is easy to get therefore you should just spend it and that was the mentality of a lot of people who were raising in 2021 times and thought that they can just you know R ra at crazy valuations and that's fine right but then like those same guys are the ones who are running out of money like right now um because they didn't approach it with this like Market agnostic frugality that I think is really important as a startup founder especially when you haven't exactly determined what the ROI of your investment dollars are just yet because you're still figuring out your product and your business model no I think that's a some valuable insights for a lot of Founders to kind of take into consideration which has now become more market Norm I think if any founder has the grow atall cost mindset either they're not getting the money to do it or they already ran out the money exactly right again sounds really basic to say today but like back then like that was um you know that that was what you were pressured to do right you were like told by multiple people that like hey you're not hiring fast enough you're not doing enough marketing you're not doing XYZ enough but we are operating a different Baseline today right and again I don't think the overcorrection is also correct either because now everyone's like okay like you have to be a cash flow positive business by this point and not spend and I'm like that don't do that either like if you if you know that's the money is there for a reason so I think you know you just have to approach it with a almost like a market agnostic kind of point of view of like what's right for the business not what's invoke great now well said so before we we wrap up what would be some final parting words for for Founders out there that are you know dealing with a pivot in the current landscape yeah um I think number one is um focus on one key metric that compounds over time and gives you that confidence of that pivot right so you know in our case right now what we have is our beta tester signups right how many test are we getting we don't have a product yet but that's the biggest signal we have right determine what that metric is and track it religiously figure out how to increase decree increase it don't decrease it increase it um and then you know why what's driving that number right um and and use that as your Northstar U I think second one is when you are communicating um treat it from the perspective of repitching your company right like what is the kind of rigor you put in when you decided to fund raise like put that same rigor into you know communicating um the reasoning behind your pivot as well and ideally you have some kind of hinge to Pivot on right I mean for us I we're really glad our final pivot was hinging on users because that is the best way to Pivot because you already know your customers right sometimes it can be out of necessity you know something about a market you have a hunch and you just have to go somewhere and sometimes it's like a product You're Building internally for a product that you no longer want to do right that's a slack case but you know have some kind of hinge hopefully that you can rely on while while you're making that pivot um and then I think the final one is to just have a very nuanced perspective on it right I think um on the more negative end people feel sometimes a lot of Shame and sense of failure with pivots and then there's like that really odd Silicon Valley mindset of like celebrating pivots like oh my God you pivoted that's great and I think neither are healthy like it's not to be celebrated I think to a crazy extent because it is all it is not a success just to be clear right but I wouldn't call it like this massive failure either but just a balance of the middle of like look this is part of the journey you have to make sure you make the most out of your pivot to extract the learnings that you had before extract the learnings on the path that you are on today to make sure that you are doing what is right by your company by your employees and and by your users at the end of the day incredibly well said Sher thank you so much for being on the show today how can people learn more about you or follow you on your journey yeah absolutely well um I am pretty active on Twitter and Linkedin so uh you can follow me add me on LinkedIn uh if you search Sherry Jen Blue Jay I think you'll find me pretty quickly um and then Twitter I'm at Sherry Yan Jang uh that's my handle on Twitter so uh you'll get kind of two pieces I think the linkedin's a bit more long form Twitter will be uh probably bit more of my music things outside of just what I'm working on um and then uh finally uh for those who are interested in finding out about what we're working on right now with Peak uh we actually have a landing page for you to sign up for the beta at peak. money um you'll see a little character with googly eyes um and uh it's it's orange um it's pretty recognizable and uh yeah sign up if you're interested and we would love to you know hear from you and see how we can build to declutter your personal finance life well considering I might be a perfect target audience I'll be sure to subscribe and we'll also put all the those links in the show notes for for audience to check out but again Sherry thank you so much for being open and transparent about the Journey of not just your Capital raise but through the pivots managing your team your co-founders and all that what you've been through and we wish you the best of luck as you continue on the next uh next pivot with Peak absolutely thank you Jason um for having me on no it's my pleasure have a good day thank for listening to the show today we hope you learned something valuable and if you did be sure to let us know in the comments or by hitting that like button and if you're a Founder looking to raise Capital then join us at thunder. VC we provide a free tool to help you identify which VC family offices or lenders are the best fit for you using raai it will save you a ton of time from chasing the wrong investors and since launching our free tools Founders that have joined our Network have gone on to raise over $1 billion dollar in financing again you can find these free tools at thunder. VC and as a reminder we release new episodes every week so stay informed by subscribing to our newsletter at join. thunder. BC again that's join. thunder. BC and if you or someone you know has recently raised around and want to share your story please email me at Jason thunder. VC and that's our show we hope you enjoyed it and we see you next week