📶 Confluence.VC 2022 Recap

Lessons from year two of running an online business

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Every year you run a business, you learn how much you don't know. 

We launched more offers, created more content, and worked towards scaling up recurring revenue. We had some things go right and a lot of things go wrong.

Anecdotal evidence > theory

Our 2022 recap highlights what went on behind the scenes at Confluence this year.  

Hopefully something in here is valuable to you.

If you work in VC and have a minute to give, we'd appreciate your input. Dozens of members have said they used previous years' data when it came time for salary negotiations, and we're trying to use this to help each of you earn more.

What went right:

  • Reached 1,671 Confluence members. This number should be higher, but we've started doing quarterly audits to make sure people are still full-time employees in venture capital, growth equity, or private equity. We're aiming to be at 2,000 by this time next year. If you're an investor and haven't applied already, you can do that here.

  • Brought on 21 investors and operators for podcasts. We focused more on talking with founders this past year, and we recapped our best takeaways of the year here. If you're looking for more 30-second takeaways like these, we recap all of our talks under the 'Wisdom' section on our website.

  • Created our investor database on Softr and got 315 upvotes on Product Hunt. We wanted to make it easier for a) companies to find the right types of investors and b) help Confluence members get more inbound deal flow. The different sections within the database filter Confluence members by sector, stage, geography, and type. If you're looking for ideas on how to build apps without writing code, we wrote a breakdown on something we built using Softr back in October.

  • Created targeted investor lists using programmatic SEO. Our plan with this was to split up datasets to create more targeted lists for long-tail keywords. For example, if you're looking for fintech investors in New York, you'd rather use a list like this instead of a larger list like this. If anybody is looking to create a programmatic SEO strategy, let us know, so we can see if we can help.

  • We recreated the front end of Commonapp.VC. Originally, all company submissions for Commonapp lived inside an Airtable database that lived within the Confluence members page. We realized this wasn't ideal for companies or investors, so we invested in improvements for both sides. Now when somebody visits Commonapp.VC, they can filter companies by sector, stage, geography, business model, and type of offering, and they can see more information about each company by clicking into any of their pages. We built this with Softr, and we're happy to work with any of you that are looking to build something similar.

  • Built a directory of the best software tools we've found. The list is segmented by top rated, tools we use, and no-code tools. We've been software guinea pigs, and these are the best software tools we've found. This is still the first version of this, and we're building out content (comparison articles, reviews, etc.), to make this a stronger content asset.

  • Launched two new newsletters (jobs + deal flow). We used to run everything we did through this one newsletter, but we realized that made things more confusing. Simplicity is good, and we weren't;t following that principle as we made more offerings. Now if people only care about venture jobs and finding venture talent, we have a newsletter for that. Similarly, if somebody only cares about finding deal flow, we have a newsletter for that.

  • Created an ultimate VC glossary. There's a lot of buzzwords and confusing language thrown around in VC; we built this to try to simplify some of that. This is a piece of pillar content for us, and this will help us create dozens of pages of content over the next few months. If you're looking for ideas on creating more content, this approach works, and you should copy it. This is still a work in progress, and we're adding to it, so let us know if we missed anything you'd want to see.

  • Created a Q&A section that captures all of the knowledge shared within our Slack group. Tons of value is shared in Slack, and we wanted to make more of that public. We've segmented questions in six separate sections, so it should be easier to find what you're looking for.

  • We passed $5k generated through our two digital products (VC Resource Library + Community Builder Playbook). These are low-ticket items, so reaching that number shows that we've built a good amount of trust with our audience. If you haven't purchased either and want to, you can use the code 'Subscriber' on the VC Resource Library to get 25% off. Use the code 'Member to get 25% off the Community Builder Playbook.

  • Secured our largest partnership deal to date. Earlier this month, we partnered with a massive company we use and trust. We think this will start to drive meaningful revenue our way for the foreseeable future. If you're a company and you're looking to partner up, let us know.

  • Finally settled on locations. Tyler and I have moved around A LOT over the past two years, but we both finally decided to settle down. He's in NYC, and I'm in Austin if anybody wants to stop and say what's up.

What went wrong:

  • We pulled out of our first in-person event. We were supposed to throw a conference for Confluence members in Miami in October, but we had to cancel when our expected title sponsor pulled out due to budget issues. Not ideal. but we'll get this set up eventually.

  • Our Slack volume is down a good amount from its peak. I think we made a mistake expecting Slack engagement to remain high forever. Competing for attention is a losing game, and we have seen engagement drop lower over the past year. We still think the Slack group is a huge resource for curated knowledge, and we're thinking through more ways to increase the value of it in 2023.

  • MRR from investor subscriptions has grown slower than we anticipated. We're up >100% YoY, but growth has slowed down the back half of 2022. We think this is because a) online communities have become less appealing as people meet more in person and b) recessions cut discretionary spending. We're thinking through what levers we can pull to fix this going into 2023.

  • Our expenses are growing. We're entirely bootstrapped, so we've operated under the principle to keep burn as low as we can. This year we realized that that was a limiting belief, so we started outsourcing more development work, content creation, and admin tasks to contractors. This has helped us get a lot more done, but it still feels weird seeing that much money leave the bank account every month.

  • We had to migrate our website to a new host. We outgrew Squarespace and had to level up to Wordpress. No need to bore you with details, but if you're starting a website today and plan to stick with it over the long haul, you're limiting your ability to grow with Squarespace, Wix, or any other simplified hosting platform.

Best content we shared in 2022:

Asks:

We're trying to do a better job of connecting and helping subscribers of this newsletter in 2023. 

Let us know who you are, why you read this, and how we can help you this coming year.

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- Clay and Tyler

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