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by jason_tko 4134 days ago
It was really just the basic set of investor questions compressed down into a very short and high bandwidth discussion. I think the general idea was to see how familiar I was with all the aspects of the business and the market.

It was at a dinner, so I was two beers in, but from memory some of the questions and answers were things like:

Q: How do you get new customers?

A: The great thing about MakeLeaps (For context: MakeLeaps is an online invoice creation and management tool for Japan) is that it's inherently viral, since every customer sends tens, hundreds or thousands of invoices to other customers, and each one is an opportunity to introduce MakeLeaps, since we have a tiny "Powered by MakeLeaps" stamp at the bottom of the email. In addition, we do paid marketing campaigns such as Adwords and retargeted Facebook newsfeed ads which we've found to be effective in Japan, and a lot of content marketing. We're working on partnerships with BigCo1, and BigCo2, and integration X and Y that could also be a great new way to get in front of more viable customers.

Kind of thing. Some other questions were just general fact finding such as:

Q: How big is your team?

Q: What's your biggest challenge right now?

Q: Why are you doing this?

Q: Why don't Japanese companies already use a tool like yours?

Q: What's your business model?

Are the ones that I remember of the top of my head. Happy to field any more questions, and thanks again for listening.

2 comments

You got patio11 to move to Tokyo? That's kind of amazing. Great podcast so far, still listening to it and congrats on the funding.
It's the better end of the deal, to be honest. He used to live here in Gifu, and while this is a great place to live, there are many things you have easier access to in Tokyo.
Do you have any numbers on how many new customers you get from the "Powered by MakeLeaps" links?
None that I can quickly share right now, but suffice it to say that if a company gets one invoice that says "Powered By MakeLeaps", it's a coincidence.

But if they get two or three, they start looking into this new service that everyone seems to be using now.

Sure, I know this works for other companies. But just wondered whether it drives 8% of new customers or 80%.