Dear reader,
I’m writing this on a beautiful Londonian Saturday morning, assisted by an iced Americano fending off the heat. Apologies for the delay in this RO Letters, as I took a vacation last week.
Four key updates from the past month:
We organized our second, successful physical RO Event in Lagos, Nigeria.
We raised €10,000 in equity out of the €30,000 we need to unlock the €50,000 loan we were approved for.
Our CTO, Paul, has released exceptional product upgrades that will superpower our RO Ambassadors.
We’ve reflected on Q2 and defined our strategy for Q3.
Our second RO Event in Lagos
We partnered with a friend of mine, Yannick Deza, to organize an RO Event in Lagos.
The event was structured as a panel discussion between Richmond Bassey, co-founder of Bamboo (a Nigeria fintech) and Jordy Kiange Beni, principal at Octerra Capital (an African VC).
Both guests have ties to the RO. We recently published an exclusive interview with Richmond and Jordy is an RO reader. How many organizations could get Richmond and Jordy in a room, for an entire evening, on short notice, for free? With all due humility, not many.
The point of these RO Events is to introduce the RO brand to new potential paid subscribers. Post-event, we reach out to event attendees who fit our ICP (VCs & MBA programs). These sales processes commence from a place of pre-existing trust and value exchange, rather than cold.
This event cost us a little less than €300. A single-seat RO subscription is €300. A single RO sub sold from the Lagos event gets us to break even. Every additional one is pure margin.
With time, we’ll be able to confidently predict RO Events’ ROI (ie: cost of event vs resulting new ARR). This will enable us to more ambitiously and accurately spend on them.
And once again: RO Events are fun and rewarding to organize! The event was free and according to Yannick, extremely well-received by attendees. This sounds like a win-win-win situation if I’ve ever heard of one.
Yannick being the legend he is
Raising €10,000 out of the €30,000 to unlock the loan
I’ll keep this short - we got approval from a French bank to receive a €50,000 loan. That loan is conditioned on us raising an additional €30,000 in equity to reinforce our treasury.
One of our original angel investors just re-invested €10,000. We need €20,000 more. Without being dramatic, this is likely the last time you’ll be able to invest in the RO. I want us to get to profitability by the end of 2026 and fund our growth with revenue thereafter.
Want to invest?
Terms are the same as our original angels got: €1.5M floor, €2.5M cap. 20% discount. Automatic conversion at 1.5M on May 10, 2027 if no further fundraise above 300K until then. Instrument is the French version of a SAFE (called BSA Air).
We’re building one of this century’s most important business publications by covering one of this century’s most consequential economic sectors (the global startup scene).
Do you wish you invested in The Financial Times at the very beginning? If so, you should probably invest in the RO.
Email me at [email protected] or WhatsApp me (+33749127002) if you want in. Minimum investment of €10,000.
New RO Ambassador features developed by our superstar CTO, Paul
As mentioned in RO Letters #13, our “word-of-mouth engine” is powered by the RO Ambassador program.
RO Ambassadors are young, ambitious VCs around the world who organize RO Events and connect us to local, potential RO subscribers. In exchange, they get free RO access, bespoke connections to anyone within the RO network, and grow their personal credibility/network through the RO Events they organize.
Paul has been building tools to help RO Ambassadors share the RO’s work more efficiently.
RO Ambassadors can now easily share any paywalled articles with non-RO subscribers. They search for the specific article and send the prospect a special link. The prospect enters their email and is able to read the full article without paying. On the back-end, we have a Google Sheets that tracks these emails & on which articles they were used.
RO Ambassadors can also easily extend RO free trials autonomously. Once again, we track which RO Ambassador extends trials to whom. This helps us keep an eye on everything and step into the sales process when needed.
Paul is an absolute Godsend. He’s impressively upskilling on the RO’s tech stack and is whipping up new features from scratch. For example, he built a fully-functional SSO for our university clients.
I’m simply obsessed with the RO team and overwhelmed with gratitude that these exceptional individuals choose to work with me.
Q2 wrap-up & Q3 goals
Final update here.
Aakash and I had a lengthy debrief about Q2 and our plan for Q3. We’re both aligned on the path forward, which includes some organizational shapeshifting.
Aakash becomes RO’s Head of Growth with three clear mandates:
Grow & improve the RO Ambassador program, aiming to organize two RO Webinars/Events per month.
Owning from start to finish, all leads coming from the RO Ambassador program (either via direct intros from Ambassadors or via RO Webinars/Events)
Setting up & executing RO’s sales motion for VCs (we’ve been mostly relying on intros for VC sales, but we need to do more structured and ambitious cold outreach. We’re not selling enough VC subscriptions.)
I (Tim) support Aakash on sales, but doubles-down on editorial by:
Recruiting new RO Correspondents & editing RO Long Reads.
Recruiting a new “Head of Interviews”, in charge of writing the RO’s interview format.
Bottom-line: we’re not reinventing the wheel for Q3. No major strategy shifts. Mostly clarifying roles (Aakash doubles-down on sales, I double-down on editorial) and fostering the momentum we’re starting to feel.
Conclusion
There’s other very exciting stuff I either can’t announce yet or don’t want to before we can truly consider it a W. Hopefully, you’ll hear about these in RO Letters #15.
Finally: I’m living out my freaking dream. I get to work with people I respect and admire on something I obsessively believe in. Beaming with energy for Q3.
Have a great week-end,
Tim