Update: Y Combinator, Fundraising, and Freemium

April 26, 2024

Justin Kelsey Founder & CEO

These last four weeks bring a slew of exciting new updates on all fronts, making the light at the end of the tunnel more clear than ever. Our team is dialed in on exactly how we're building and growing over the next 12 months, thanks to extensive customer feedback, and now we just need to finish this fundraise to make it happen.

🎙️ Announcements

• Hiring Additional Front-End Engineer: With the influx of recent capital for this round, we've started hiring our next Founding Front-End Engineer, with equity available. This person with be the our 4th member of our founding team.
• Y Combinator: We've officially applied to the Summer 2024 cohort, and should hear back in the coming weeks. If accepted, we'll cease fundraising, so investors have a few more weeks to get in at a significantly discounted valuation. If you know any YC partners personally, feel free to drop our name in their ear!
• Freemium Model: After discussions with our advisors, we've introduced a 'Freemium' model to drive rapid product adoption, allowing customers to collect a limited number of videos for free, then pushing them to upgrade plans

🏆 Recent Traction

• First 7 paid users converted from free trials to recurring monthly subscriptions, marking our first $4,200 in "official" ARR; expecting 20 more customers to convert to paid over the coming few weeks
• Expecting 300+ customers onboarding over the next 60 days with our new Freemium model, allowing agency partners to bring their entire client base on board without needing to convince them into a trial
• Working with Lowe's as a 'Design Partner' to brainstorm and build enterprise-level features into SwitchFrame, with a pilot targeted this year

💰 Current Fundraising

For our current Pre-Seed fundraising efforts:

• $150k of capital committed via SAFEs with $6mm pre-money valuation
• $300k+ of soft commitments, in final stages of due diligence

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We have ~20 or so interest investor conversations ongoing, so this round could close much faster than planned, but still have $500k-750k open until that happens.

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If we end up going to Y Combinator, we'll most likely stop all current fundraising, as fundraising after Demo Day increases valuations to $15-20mm on average. So, now's the time for investors to got locked in to a massive potential discount.

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As a reminder, we're looking for angels, family offices, and select pre-seed funds that play at our current stage. Even if we run out of room in this round, I always love meeting new people and helping them however I can.

🤖 Product Roadmap

Our primary objectives for our next 3 months include:

• Enhancing Campaign Setup Design: cuts the setup time for a new campaign in half, with a far more intuitive user interface for self-onboarded users
• Launching Shopify App: allows us to reach the 4.6 million Shopify stores looking for UGC and video testimonials apps that can be added to their store with a single click; will automate much of the SwitchFrame onboarding
• Front-End Refactoring: updating all of our front-end code page-by-page, significantly increasing speed and reliability across the entire platform
• CRM / Email / SMS Integrations: automates collection requests by connecting to platforms customers are already using to communicate with their customers

🎯 Growth Strategy

• Agency Partnerships: Continue doubling-down here, onboarding the 500+ potential customers there into free and paid accounts
• Cold Email Outreach: Using AI-powered email automation tools to slowly reach out to 20k+ leads in our primary three customer verticals
• Paid Ads: Starting our ad campaigns on Google, YouTube, Meta, and Twitter over the coming weeks, to gauge CAC for both free and paid accounts

🙏 Asks

1. Know a partner at Y Combinator? I'd love if you sent them a nudge introducing them to SwitchFrame, as every connection helps in the selection process.
2. Know a rockstar front-end developer? If they're looking for their next move as the founding engineer at an AI startup with equity, send them my way.
3. Connected with marketing agencies and/or vertical SaaS? If they play in e-commerce, home services, or real estate — I'd love to give all their clients free SwitchFrame accounts. They win, their customers win, we win.

📢 Shout-Outs

Once again, there's always far too many people to name here, but a few that have really been instrumental to our growth this month:

• Berny and Alex Gray from Gray Ventures​
• Tim Griffin from Craftwork​
• Andrew Ashur from Lucid Bots​
• Chris Halligan from Good Human Invest​
• Jack Graham from StreetFair​
• Alec Stevanovski from HomePros​
• Louis Foreman from Enventys Partners​
• Drake Dukes from Gravity / Stealth Startup Spy​
• Matt Finneran

These next 4-6 weeks will be absolutely instrumental for our growth and success, with my primary goal being to close $500k in committed capital by end of May. I appreciate you being a part of this journey, and look forward to sharing more soon!