So, it's been a busy and fun year for us, to say the least.
As you may have already heard, we've recently announced our rebranding to InvestorHub (formerly Fresh Amplify) and announced our latest funding round.
We raised $4m with our newest partners at EVP, paving the way to growing the business for the foreseeable future.
And we did it, after the riskiest pivot possible, to our core business.
Keep reading to find out how.
We made the decision to pivot our core business early into 2022 but probably not for the reason you think.
At the time of the decision, Fresh Equities was a profitable and rapidly growing business with mid-seven digits of annual revenue.
The team was growing, and there was a clear path forward and upward.
Yet despite our growth, we had noticed a fundamental problem in capital markets that we couldn't ignore.
And so we made the decision to pivot the entire core business, a profitable and reliable model, towards an unproven, untested hypothesis in InvestorHub.
Needless to say, our stakeholders had their questions.
Why would we abandon so much revenue and retain all our overheads to pursue a high-risk venture?
Can you do both at the same time?
What if it doesn’t work?
We knew we wanted to do this all in; we knew the power of focus. We also knew we didn't have all the answers either. So why were our shareholders not just “OK” with this move but excited by it?
In a word, communication.
Although we were shifting our core business, we weren't displacing the core team, our passion for the industry, or our core mission. With the pivot, our job wasn't to tell our shareholders that we had pivoted but rather that we had unlocked a better way to execute the vision that they had invested in.
By focusing on that core message, reinforcing it through multiple communications mediums (e.g. board meetings, investor updates, one-on-one calls), and maintaining a strong belief in our team, vision, and ability to execute, our investors were willing to come along for the ride (no matter what).
And it wasn’t that we communicated with them well after the decision; it's that we were communicating well with them all the way through.
They knew us. They knew we cared. They trusted us.
Although we're not a listed company, the core lesson remains the same.
Because a “pivot" can be any number of things.
It could be a change in management, an upcoming acquisition, a new project, or the decision to stop an existing one.
From your shareholders' perspective, when something shakes up the status quo in their investment, it can challenge their original investment thesis.
This can result in investors selling down for no other reason than the perception that the investor no longer understands the strategy of their investment.
At InvestorHub, we have witnessed this occurring on multiple occasions (our technology enabled clients to intervene successfully, thankfully).
When your business pivots, your investors need to pivot with you.
And so that's your job as the management team; creating shareholders who will ride with you through all the twists and turns it takes to build a successful company.
If you can build trust with your shareholders, then you'll have investors willing to stick with you through whatever happens. I can tell you from my experience at Equities that it's the companies that communicate better and raise better.
The lesson?
Your investors are a part of your business. They deserve to be brought on the journey just as much as all other stakeholders. Those companies that can successfully do this have stronger shareholder bases, whilst those that do not often have to find new investors that believe in a “new” vision.
So how do you take investors through the pivot with you?
Rhys and I were relentlessly transparent with our plans, strategy, and concerns and didn't sugar-coat anything at any time.
We were always available. For any question or concern, we made sure that nobody ever felt that we were unreachable.
We over-communicated because we wanted to make sure nothing was missed, so even minute updates were important for us.
We always reassured our investors by mapping our journey against our vision (the same vision they had bought in on) and how our new plan was a better way of achieving our goals
What pivot are you taking your shareholders through?
How central are your investors to your next pivot? Are you bringing them with you? Are you tying it back to the original vision they bought in on?
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