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!

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A Quick Recap on Industry News 🗞 

Infant formula brand Bobbie releases first national campaign. Five lifestyle tweaks to better wellbeing. The perfect DTC subscription business. Tiny Organics raises $11M Series-A. The updated 2021 Resource Guide for Female Entrepreneurs. Pink Tank Group has launched. London’s Mamamade sees rapid growth launching vegan toddler food. Bumble gives employees a collective week-long holiday twice a year.

🔑 Insights From This Week’s Episodes on the Female Startup Club Podcast

Directly from the women building the world’s most exciting businesses in the e-commerce and CPG space.

1. The TikTok Guide to Viral ✨

EP193: Helen Yin saw her business, Inoki Bathhouse, absolutely blow up through the magic that is TikTok this year. All despite being a self-confessed tech-phobe. She’s published 81 videos and garnered 100,000+ followers and more than 1 million likes.

So, what’s the secret?

1. Be Intentional 🎭

To so many people it’s a numbers game, putting as much content as possible out there and seeing what hits. However, Helen has found her videos perform a lot better when people can respond to it in an emotional way. Be intentional.

1. Work The Algorithm 🔢

Whether you have millions of followers or very few, if the first couple of people react well to the video it will spill out into another community. Make sure to hook that initial audience by storytelling and evoking that emotional response used a formulated strategy.

2. It’s Totally Your Business! 😎

EP194: Still thinking about this chat I had with The Nue Co’s Jules Miller. She’s truly awesome. She created this company with her Grandpa, with a mission to interconnect all aspects of our health under one eco-system.

The key insight that stuck with me: as an entrepreneur you should always remember that it is your business and that you are actually in control.

Once investors enter the picture, it can become easy to blur these lines and lose a sense of control or ownership. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Nobody really knows your business as well as you do. Have true conviction in what you do, as this will continue to reflect in the success of the company.

FSC Mini-Series 🍷 from the Founder

In this new mini-series within the FSC podcast, I’m taking you on the journey while I develop my non-alc wine brand and build it in public. I will be sharing what’s happening in real-time, including the mistakes we learned along the way.

Part 3: Dividing The Sweet Imaginary Pie 🥧

In this episode, we’re chatting about how we met our business partner, how they got on board, and how we divided the company. For privacy purposes, let’s call him Viv for now (an ode to the brand name that shall never be 🥲).

- The How We Met 🤝

My goal has always been to connect with as many people as possible. When we started this project, we thought: let’s ask everyone we know for advice. And let’s ask everyone we know if they know someone else who can help us.

Through the friend of a brother of a friend (I know), we got in touch with the Master Sommelier that was to become our business partner (who we’re calling Viv).

- The How We Partnered 🤗

He was immediately interested and super excited about what we were doing. The energy, the vision… It was pretty great to get this confirmation.

We hired him very early on as a consultant. However, it quickly became apparent that having him as a business partner would be a million times better. He’s a pretty well-connected guy and had a tonne of expertise to offer our concept.

- The How We Split ✂️

But, how does that look in terms of equity and commitment? The way we saw it, we have 50% of this company each to start with. We went into the conversation very open-minded: what did Viv have in mind? How much was he willing to contribute? And what was the number we were all comfortable with?

Tune into the episode to find out what we settled on…

We approached this in the way that we want this to be huge, and we see the value that he can bring. He could help us achieve what we wanted to achieve so much faster, whilst wanting to keep his job and not being an equal third partner.

🎧 Tune in next Saturday for the next part of the journey!

Biz Failz 🎢

Here’s a few crackers straight from Hype Club.

We’ve got an ongoing Biz Wins & Fails chat going in HC. But tbh… The fails are far more interesting than the highlights. This is where we can learn and hopefully avoid in our own journeys, and what keeps us feeling like we are not in this alone. A lot of us are seeing a lot of highlights, but there are so many downs, and things that go wrong. 

Megan from a|dash shared a fail this week:

“Every part of our 2nd production run has been a fail. First we only received 3 of 5 pallets from production due to an issue when our co-packer double batched. While we got a credit for the ingredients, it meant we needed to re-order ingredients to run the additional two pallets as we were going to be just a bit short on our Ashwagandha & coffee extract.

MOQs meant that the credit only covered a very small portion of the ingredients needing to be purchased earlier than forecasted. Then the remaining two pallets arrived, with one severely damaged, so we've had to file an insurance claim for 42% loss on that pallet, which again means cash flow issues as even when we get the covered amount, we will be losing out on revenue from that pallet that we can't make up since we have a minimum run of 5 pallets.

Then we were went through and QA-ed all of the stock, we were short 14.75% of what we paid for, so above our contracted 10% production loss rate. Now we're having to sort that with our co-packer. Again, losing out on projected revenue, all of which was needed to cover costs for the next run. We'll get there, but just feels super challenging at the moment as cash flow is such a big issue for us. :( --”

Shouting It Out 📢 Modern Mentors:

We’re all about Ask Me Anything threads and live mini masterminds with Founders in Hype Club, and last week saw our first going up with Kailey Bradt from Susteau. A few pointers…

• From day one invest in a good attorney/legal representation to sort your trademark and organise your paperwork (especially if you’re going down the path of fundraising)

• Don’t waste money on custom packaging. Go for stock packaging to get your first run out there and save cash for marketing. Shoot for being cost effective in the beginning and know that it’ll change when you get into a groove and know what changes you’ll need to make 

• Raise on convertible notes when you have no valuation 

• Y-Combinator has a great format for a safe note

• Offer a discount to the initial investors who will buy into your next round 

• Consider short term loans with friends and family that is to be paid back when you raise significant capital instead of adding them to your cap table

• If you’re shooting for the stars and know that you’re going to take the path of traditional VC, think about forgoing friends and family altogether and go straight to VC so you can keep your cap table clean 

• Focus on building community with long term partnerships vs one off posts or shoutouts. Building relationships is key

• Find folks who are passionate and excited about what you’re doing and creating in the world and lean into those people 100% 

• When you discover great content creators who love your brand think about hiring them as an extension of your team part time (eg 10 hours per week) 

It’s a juicy session, to watch the full replay join us and sign up here to meet founders like Kailey and Megan. The bonus is that you’ll also get access to our library of workshops, masterclasses and biz resources. If you’re in the ecomm world, you’re bound to learn a thing (or a million).

Our pricing is currently $59 per month, cancel anytime.

What’s on this week? 👀

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

TUES: Katina Mountanos from Kosterina - early harvest extra virgin olive oil 🫒

THURS: Azora from Goldune - making sustainability less beige 🌈

SAT: Doone’s back - Part 4 of the non-alc wine brand journey 🍷

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔 

📚 Dreams From My Father, by Barack Obama: a story of race and inheritance.

🎧 Gary Vaynerchuk, with (you guessed it) Gary Vaynerchuk: for the smart way to get a positive mindset.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool job listings on our radar:

USA 🇺🇸

• We’re hiring! We're looking for a U.S based Tiktok creator. Said creator simply needs to be a Tiktok user that understands the platform, has fingers on the pulse of trends + pop culture and has a keen interest in ExPeRiMeNtInG. No following required. Just hit reply.

NYC 🗽

• Andie, swimwear by women for women, is seeking a Marketing Leader to help accelerate their growth. Could this be you? Check out the listing.

• DTC Underwear brand Knickey is searching for its next Product Development Manager. Apply here.

Sydney 🏄🏻‍♂️

• Lil Ahenkan, Founder of Flex Factory is on the look out for some folks in Social Media and Marketing. Check this out for more info.

Toronto 🇨🇦

• Last week’s guest and Founder of Inoki Bathhouse, Helen Yin, is looking for someone to build her company with. Pretty awesome. Drop her an e-mail directly if this sounds like something for you.

PS:

Tell me something… Where did you hang out to get smarter this week? I’d love to check it out. Just hit reply. 👋