Our first month on MailChimp went well: lessons learned is that any subscribers to the newsletter need to wait until next month for the following newsletter and don’t get sent the most recent one which was automatic on our old platform. Also, we have a 0% unsubscribe rate thus far and a 62% open rate. We never received this information from the Listserv so it’s new to us.
The gang at theMin.ca went to a number of events in Mississauga, Toronto, and Waterloo last month. Some interesting startups and ideas were seen. We’ve been following up with the founders and teams as time has allowed. Some team members also visited a number of Angel groups and Accelerators in the last month and will make a presentation to the team at our next meeting.
Andrew has a meeting with the Mayor of Mississauga on Tuesday, June 18, to review the interest the City would have in associating itself with our activities and perhaps supporting an Accelerator.
Going back to the First Round 2015 post about the top 10 findings of successful startups, the number 6 reason for success is co-founders do better than solo founders. We actually can add a lot of information to this from our own deal flow information:
- Founderfuel – 0.5x better exit rate for 2 founders over solo founder
- TechStars – 1.5x better exit rate for 2 founders over solo founder
- YCombinator – 1.3x better exit rate for 2 founders over solo founder
- 500 Startups – 1.3x better exit rate for 2 founders over solo founder
When you look at it, you could convince yourself the reason is that one founder has to dedicate themselves to raising money and selling the product, and the other has to build it. When you have only one founder, they are responsible for everything. Want to spend time with your new-born son, or sleep in once, or get your appendix removed? Well, you’re behind schedule if you are a solo founder. We’ll add this to our filter. (hmmm Founderfuel looks a little weak but the sample size was small)
The newsletter is looking for someone or a group of people to interview Angels who can relate their first investment and what they learned. We’d like it to be a regularly occurring part of the newsletter.
Happy boating and travels everyone, we will see each other in person in September!