Hi! I’m Doone, your hype girl in business. This is your weekly source of inspiration & information on all things in the e-commerce and CPG space, read by like-minded Entrepreneurs - that happen to be women - like you. If you find value in this content please like & share above, or forward it to someone in your network. I love it when you do that! If someone forwarded you this email you can subscribe here:

Bulletin 📌

Enter: the szn of change 🍂🌱

Whether you're dusting off your comfies ready for winter or just spent way more than you care to admit on your Aussie summer wardrobe, one thing is for certain. Change is in the air. Change and transformation go hand-in-hand, and BOY do I feel like we're going through a pretty fab transformation with FSC right now. It's killing me that I can't tell you, but trust me. Hold on tight. This one is going to be worth it. 👇👇👇

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Partake Foods announces $11.5M Series B fundraise (largest ever from a black women in food & bev CPG!!!). Forbes 50 over 50 list released. Hailey Biebs "Call Her Daddy" episode saw numbers skyrocket. The Lip Bar closes $6.7M round. Women are leading the small biz boom in the US. Selena Gomez's health startup is here. Are Tay Swift & Drake dropping a diss track? Here is the first woman to launch a billion-dollar hedge fund. Peloton has its fourth round of layoffs, ouch. Female exec networking firm Chief launches in the UK. Melinda Gates is investing $1B (of her own $$$) into women in the US. Sista launches $100M female-founder-focused fund. Elizabeth Holmes is due back in court this month. Sephora launches subscription for same-day delivery. Charli D'Amelio leads latest Prada campaign.

🔑 Insights from recent & resourceful HYPE CLUB workshops

Directly from female experts building in the e-commerce and CPG space, welcomed into our private network: Hype Club.

1. Fundraising: everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) ✨

Hosted by Jessie Gabriel, founder of All Places, a business and legal strategy firm seeking to create a more equitable world by actively helping women from all backgrounds and industries grow their businesses.

• What does pre-seed, seed, Series A-B-C-D all actually mean? I'm so lost 😶‍🌫️

Investment rounds have different names, and all of these names are relatively new. Funnily enough, there are no set definitions for them. People use these terms to indicate the size of the round that they’re going to do. It's easy to be intimidated by the terms and to feel silly, to doubt yourself... but actually no. There is no set definition for these things, more just the order of doing things. You're good, sis.

• Financials has never been my thing, is that a problem? 😬

Simply put, yes. All founders should get as comfortable as possible with financials and financial modelling. How much it costs to run your business, how much it costs to create your products, and how much it costs for you to live comfortably… This is what will allow you to realize whether your business is viable. You need to have a handle on your business expenses. Otherwise, there’s no chance of this ever becoming a sustainable business.

• What's your number one piece of advice for fundraisers today? 💸

Not everybody can just go out and raise a million dollars, particularly women. Data shows it’s harder for women to raise money. It takes them longer, and they raise less. That’s the (shitty) reality today. So how do you actually raise money? Network is the right place to start. Best case scenario: you have a great network already, that is supportive of you and your brand. If you don’t have that list, the time to grow it is right now. Actively reach out to people before you’re fundraising, get involved in networking groups. It’s hard, and it's a lot of work, but that network is critical.

2. Implementing and optimizing subscriptions ✨

With Lisa Shea, e-comm enthusiast & Customer Success Lead at Upscribe (the plug-in giving your subscriptions the charge they need).

Building an e-commerce business in 2022 is like playing an intense game of whac-a-mole. Competition is fierce (low barriers to entry mean there are a LOT more founders out there), acquisition costs are high and recent disruptions have made scaling difficult (to say the least). So, when someone offers a solution that makes life a little easier, we listen.

That's where subscriptions come in. Consumers loved them for their convenience, personalization, and added value, and we business owners benefit from lower customer acquisition costs & recurring revenue (just to name a few). We had the luck to have Lisa come by and teach us a thing (or 4) about exactly how to go about creating your subscription service:

1. What are you selling? 🛍️ If you're just starting out you'd be smart to pick a subscription niche. If not, ask yourself what kind of products would make sense as a subscription. What are your customers purchasing regularly on a weekly-fortnightly-monthly basis?

2. What model works for you? 🙋‍♀️ You can opt for a membership model, replenishment model, or curation model (Hello Fresh, for example). Make sure to consider all options and settle on something that aligns with your biz goals.

3. What price are you setting? 💰 You want to be hitting that pricing sweet spot. Customers should feel like they hit a bargain, but you should also make a profit. Whichever pricing structure you choose, make it flexible so that customers can change to one that suits their needs.

4. Time to build your storefront 🏬 Then comes the fun part. You can use Shopify to build your storefront and use subscription management software like Upscribe, which provides integrated Shopify checkout for a unified brand experience ✨

Gutted you missed one of our workshops? Understandable. Luckilyy, all workshops are recorded and saved within our member portal. We'd love to have you, join here.

What’s on this week? 👀

Let’s see what we have in store for you this week…

WEDS: Hype Club's First Weekly Virtual Coffee Chat @ 11:00EST 💗

THURS: Jash Mehta from Pop & Bottle - organic almond and oat lattes 🥤

FRI: Hype Club's Second Weekly Virtual Coffee Chat @ 09:00AEST 💗

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 Girls That Invest by Simran Kaur: the essential principles and your guide to financial independence through shares and stocks.

🎧 The Diary of a CEO hosted by Steven Bartlett: what it’s like BTS of being an entrepreneur, the deep, dark thoughts that nobody else will share with you.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool women-owned DTC job listings on our radar:

REMOTE 🌎

• Jewelry brand Smoothie London is on the lookout for someone to head their TikTok Content Creation strategy. More information here.

Portland 🇺🇸

• The company saving lives by putting breast cancer diagnosis in our own hands, Gabbi, is looking for a Product & Visual Designer. More here.

Sydney 🌞

• Her Black Book, making it easier to shop for the world's most beautiful brands, is looking for an Affiliate Account Manager and Business Development Manager to ramp up for their next stage of growth. Find out more here.

If you resonate with something in this week’s newsletter we’d love to know! Share it with us on Instagram tagging @femalestartupclub & @dooneroisin ✨