EAH Slack Newsletter- 12 July 2024

Hey Community 👋

Some big updates below, probably most important in a while so do be sure to read through!

Closing EAH raise 💵 🤝

I'm happy to announce we are closing our funding round that has been happening in the background for the past 6 months! 🚀

We've adapted our plan and thanks to the core of our investors being EAH accountants we are now finally in a position to push forward.

We are going to use the funding to primarily scale our current offering and then explore other areas we can expand to, whether that's going to be North America, other verticals (like legal) or even building some of our own product (probably for startups rather than accountants).

I think for the vast majority of you there hasn't been much of an impact as EAH members but it did mean we deprioritised doing more for this community like special discussions and welcome webinars we used to do more regularly as well as more in-person events.

So we will now refocus on doing more to offer you value around the work you do with our startups.

Impact on you 👀

So above means things will change, but anything that will impact the experience for you guys will be rolled out slowly and tested first.

One thing we tell every new startup on the very first call- the time and trust of our accountants are sacred.

We have no intention of changing that approach at the core of everything we have done for the past 4 years.

We know very clearly we make money (and now equity) from your time and that means we need to ensure this offers you plenty of value in return for that precious time in your busy calendars!

First changes happening 🤔

So a few things we are already starting to experiment on a limited basis that some of you would have encountered or will soon

• 30-minute 1-2-1s: Did a limited trial of this with Goti in Australia and overall worked well. We will now try this with Uniify and Brieff in the UK.

  • It is obviously shorter so even 5 minutes of being late or talking about the weather makes it harder to achieve what is needed! So hope you appreciate the condensed nature of this leaves less time for relationship building with the startups.

  • But it can save a lot of time for everyone while still getting the insight needed!

• Async video surveys: We are testing this as a stand-alone or to support the shorter 30-minute 1-2-1s. Rolling out now with Brieff's UK programme for the market research part. Might test later if applicable for product research as well.

  • Should be a really efficient way of getting feedback, especially to help prep for 1-2-1s

  • Does mean we need to give a certain deadline to complete so startups have enough time to review before the call

• Un-moderated 1-2-1s: We've learnt that some startups really value us being heavily involved and others don't. So we've started to price our moderation separately. If they value it great, if not we save a lot of time not moderating as this is one of the areas that takes out a lot of our capacity. Uniify are the first one to go with that.

  • Obviously we will brief startups to respect your time but there is a bigger chance they won't help themselves to squeeze a bit more insight so do let us know if that happens

  • I know many of you are often happy to give more time but part of what we see as the value for you is when you sign up for an EAH program you know the time commitment involved, rather than the never ending "one more call" "just another 10 minutes". So it's important to not make exceptions as much as possible

All of the above are about making the most of your time while still delivering to startups what they need to succeed in building products that solve pain points for you and your client, so we will always reevaluate if that balance isn't achieved.

No point saving us and you time if it doesn't deliver what startups need to achieve their goals!

UK Handed over to @Ben Swanson 🇬🇧 

So as most of you in the UK know, Ben has been onboarding in the background to take the UK off my hands.

I truly enjoyed working with everyone I got to know in the UK, many going back to before I started EAH, and I will be sad to not see you on a regular basis (will still see you occasionally I'm sure!).

But from a personal perspective after 4 years of managing the UK from Australia I need my evening back and work a more normal(ish) working day.

I trust you will all be supportive of Ben as he starts to take over and learns. ❤️🙏

🔚 That's it!

So lots more happening and some new potential startups to present soon but enough of a big update for now 🙂

Thanks everyone for being part of this amazing community and all your contribution to making this happen and all the incredible (and patient) work you do with our startups.

It often takes a while to see (and the nature of the startup journey is that it can sometimes still end in failure) but you all truly have an amazing impact on their journey and the industry's future as a whole! 👏👏👏

Cheers, Yohan

[Jump over to the post in Slack here]