Referly Friends & Family Emails (aka Early Stage Investor Relations)

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I started writing monthly friends and family updates in June and it has been great for getting our biggest advocates deeply invested in Referly.

Even in the midst of YC, sending these updates makes it easy for me to pump up investor relations and re-engage key supporters, while simultaneously explaining to my family and friends why I’ve been so out of touch.

Looking back, I’m so glad I wrote these just to see how far we’ve come.  Enjoy, and I hope you’ll consider this approach for your own investor relations as an early stage company.

They are in reverse chronological order, with pictures:

August 2012

Hello Referly family, friends, and supporters –

Wow, less than 3 weeks left until YCombinator Demo Day!
We’ve made a lot of progress on product since our last update (see June and July updates below the signature box).  Last month we focused on increasing activation of accounts (first link shared) - and now we’ve got our activation rate up around 56% so we’re switching gears to focus on making sure ANYONE can earn a reward in their first 72 hours as a member.
Thank you to everyone who has been spreading the word to friends and sending us notes of encouragement, feedback, ideas, soundbites from conversations where people weren’t sure they should sign up… keep it coming, we read and digest every word.

What’s New Since Our Last Update

How You Can Help
  • We are hiring!  Both of our interns will be headed back to school in the fall, so we are looking for a full stack software engineer preferably with PHP/Kohana experience.  We are also hiring for a full time iOS developer (yes, the app is coming!)
  • We are moving!  Our lease in Mountain View is not up until the end of November but since we will be competing with 80-something other YC companies we are getting a jump start on securing a space in San Francisco.
  • We build fast – send your feedback!  We never get tired of hearing it, we’ve got a long wishlist, and you can help us prioritize by using Referlyand letting us know your thoughts and requests.
And of course some fun pictures of our adventures are attached.  Onward!

The walls around the office – deconstructing magazines

Dave got his money back.

July 2012


Hello there Referly friends, family, and supporters — I hope you had a great 4th of July!

We’ve been hard at work since our last update in June getting new customers and partners. On the product front we’ve been focused on making it even simpler to get started recommending products and earning rewards, and we’ve circled back on a lot of our core functionality to make sure people can easily understand what to do once they sign up.  Feedback is very welcome.
What’s New Since Our Last Update
Charity Features Launched on TechCrunch
We listened to your feedback that some of you would prefer to earn rewards on behalf of a charitable cause, and we ran an experiment raising money for Room to Read in July to test this idea.
Turns out a lot of people were excited to participate, and yesterday we announced on TechCrunch that you can now choose to donate your Referly rewards to over 100 charities:
Step by step instructions for getting your account set up to support a charity are on our blog:

Cofounder bonding with Al

June 2012

Hey there wonderfully supportive, patient, and opinionated friends and family!

We’ve been busily cooking up the next rev of Referly which launched this morning on TechCrunch:
TLDR version: we have release public profile pages, analytics, updated browser bookmarklet, featured categories & brands
Read about our new features here:
And some thoughts on how to view competitors at this early stage here:
Hope you are all well, and please keep the candid feedback coming.  YC started last week and we are counting the days (71) til Demo Day!

 

First day with Hudson the Super Intern! Camped out at Steak Out in MV for some delicious beers

Startups are not glamorous (thank you Al!)

Final days in the Potrero Hill apartment – never got around to furniture and broken our lease. This is the story board for the May launch.

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