Green-broke Sep 24
Hello Equible friends,
Welcome to the first issue of Green-broke a monthly newsletter for anyone interested or invested in coming along for the ride with me (Equible founder, used-to-be cowgirl, grammatically challenged author 🤠).
This newsletter is a monthly update for you and a routine check point for me, keeping you informed (more likely entertained by the ups and downs) and me accountable. No doubt it will be a rodeo, here what to expect:
Product insights, decisions, and development.
Business strategy, investment, and growth 🤞
Horsing around with all the puns and particulars from the equine industry.
Brought to you straight from the horse's mouth (yours truly). Which brings me to the topic of today’s newsletter…
What have I been doing for the last 3 months?
In short, product discovery and plenty of self discovery. To date, I have invested $10k and 50 days (approx. 400 hrs) into Equible. The outputs from this effort are less tangible, but amongst them there is a lot of learning, here is what I’ve discovered.
Connections and insights take time now, but will save more time later
One of the big pros of starting Equible was working with who I wanted to (the neigh-avety!). The reality is I’m working with no one, formally anyway. I went into this suspecting loneliness and lack of thought diversity were up there on the list of risks to success. To mitigate, I've focused on connecting which at times felt like a waste or I am barking up the wrong tree, but really it’s these conversations that have led to some key insights. Shout-out to these folks for connecting and sharing gems:
Jerome via Julia — for finding holes in horse performance data before I spent time and money for the same outcome.
Toby via Jessie — for the heads up on e-commerce platform policy and payment gateway limits — better to know now!
Marj via Kayne — for mentioning Zed Run… surely $150m flowing through a virtual marketplace on a horse racing game is an indicator of viability!? Confirmation bias aside, there is gold in finding out what information players use to make trading decisions… 🤔
So what do you do?… I am building a system for horses… a what?
Recently I joined a fireside chat webinar on raising capital for female founders. One of the speaker’s key points was the importance of the narrative. To her telling the story well demonstrates leadership qualities that investors look for. This isn’t new to me or something I usually struggle with professionally, but it did get me thinking about how I answer the casual, everyday question.
I concluded I haven’t been in good form, especially since just about every person I meet is connected to horses in some way, shape, or form — so I need to get it right! I might not know when I’m chatting to the next customer or investor. Here is the latest revision of my talking points, what do you think?
What: I am building an online marketplace for horses.
Why: People do not have an easy way to find horses to buy or a secure way to sell their horses.
Who: Professionals, breeders, and competitors. People who are regularly trading horses.
Market: Most horses are traded at sales/auctions (8% commission) or on Facebook (with terrible experiences). The gap is where I am aiming to get product-market fit.
End goal: Think ASX but horses instead of companies.
Just use AI
ICYMI like I did, there is an AI tool for EVERYTHING. I wasn’t resisting but I also wasn’t diving in until I got a little nudge from a couple of folks who were more familiar. I was stuck needing to analyse unstructured data (Facebook posts) to understand market and consumer trends and stats – indicative only for the data / code nerds stressing about accuracy.
Enter Julius with the tagline ‘chat with your files and get expert-level insights in seconds’. I gave it a sample set of 200 posts from 10 different Facebook groups for trading horses and it spat out interesting stuff like 6% posts include ‘wtb’ (want to buy) and non-anonymous posts are 5.8x more likely to receive likes or reactions. It needs more work, but this was a quick, easy, and free way to get the cogs turning!
Now I can call myself an expert, thank you Julius.
We’ve reached the tail end of the first issue. Thank you for sticking with me and I hope you’ll join me for the next ride.
Those of you lucky first receivers have been involuntarily subscribed, so if you hear enough from me through other channels or just don’t want another email, you can opt out at the bottom.
Best,
Emily