📶 Confluence.VC Behind the Scenes: June 2022 Update

What's going right / wrong, lessons from our experiments, and our asks for you

June 30, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

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ARR growth has been the metric we've been focused on this year, and that number had been pretty flat the last three months. This month was about testing ways to increase ARR momentum, and we were able to get a few breakthroughs from those tests.

This update includes: 

  • Our metrics

  • What went right

  • What went wrong

  • Our asks

Any feedback or help you are willing to give is much appreciated 🙏

Metrics:

What went right:

  • Introduced free trials to members. Converting free-to-paid is a form of art. We've studied all of the companies that do this well, and offering free trials is something that many of them do. We've condensed the trial period to three days so that there is more pressure for members to actually use their premium membership before it expires. If you're a free member and want to take advantage of your free trial, check out our monthly or annual plan.

  • Six new premium members. People like to test things out before they open up their wallet, and offering free trials is helping with this.

  • We've had four new businesses sign up for our talent collective. We think this will continue to be a bigger part of our business, and we are doing more to create awareness about it to our members. We think Confluence has become the best collection of venture talent in the world, and this allows funds to hire candidates directly from this talent pool. We've gotten a lot more signups since we started offering a free month and promoting the service in the newsletter.

  • Began a referral program for our newsletter. We've wanted to do this for a while but haven't had a way to do it (thanks, @beehiiv). If you want to start getting free things for sharing this with your friends, check out the bottom of this newsletter.

  • Started a new newsletter focused on jobs. Job postings are some of the most-clicked resources within our weekly newsletter, and we realized that we needed to send out a separate email every week showcasing the roles that are being featured on our board. This has driven more engagement to our job board which has increased the value prop for companies to use us for their hiring needs. If you are hiring, check out where we can help.

What went wrong: 

  • Low demand on the agency side. We help funds and companies generate value by activating their communities. We've started testing out different ways to get in front of potential clients but haven't identified the ideal customer profile yet.

  • Syndicate deals slowing down. We talked about this last month, but we're seeing a slow down on the syndicates front. Valuation pullbacks are a positive for us, but it's harder to convince LPs to write checks when market sentiment is down. As a reminder, if you want to see our deal flow and choose the ones you want to invest in, you can back us here.

June Media:

Most popular: 

VC jobs:

1️⃣ Job drop #1

2️⃣ Job drop #2

3️⃣ Job drop #3

4️⃣ Job drop #4

Dealflow:

Premium content:

Asks:

Signup for our talent collective to make better hiring decisions.

How annoying is it to filter through 100 unqualified candidates in order to find the one that fits what you're looking for?

We've done the hard part of filtering experience for you, so all you have to do is choose who you want to work with.

All investors in the talent collective have tier-one fund experience, they don't need training, and they come with their own network and deal flow. The first month is free using the code 'Firstmonthconfl'.

Sponsor:

Vauban is the easiest way to launch & run your venture investing.

From fundraising to exits, Vauban provides an automated back-office that handles the legals, banking, investor onboarding, and administration, which allows clients to focus on what matters: finding the next unicorn & building investor relationships. Vauban has facilitated over $1bn of capital invested in companies such as Revolut, Bolt and Airbnb, and they're just getting started. 

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