I’ve already acknowledged how my own biases and beliefs shaped the way I built CoolCoach.
I have already shared how wrong I was in thinking that a solid proof of concept would be more valuable than building my fundraising game.
Now, I'm actively learning to fundraise.
I often come across posts about how broken fundraising is in the social sector. The first feeling is always dejection. Why am I even continuing on this journey? Should I not have given up five years ago?
Then comes anger. Anger at everyone who judged me and put me down for not being able to fundraise. I want to share all these articles with them to claim some kind of validation that it's not me but fundraising is the problem.
Then I remember that being angry and resentful towards someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It makes me smile. The smile also creates the space to remember that I am actively learning to fundraise because I was focused on the product early on, and much of the feedback I had received was not entirely wrong.
To get out of this hole, I open up this pitch (click on the hyperlink or scroll down to the end of this post) I made close to 8 years ago.
I can’t believe how atrocious the pitch looks and I have no idea what I was trying to say with the first slide—but the content still feels solid. At least, to me. Back then, I had nothing but ideas. Today, many of those ideas have been validated, which gives me a quiet sense of pride. Even if no one else sees the progress, I know the road we’ve traveled—from a clumsy old deck to a proven impact model.
There’s a world where I didn’t act on my ideas. A world where I didn’t do the research, or build on the badly formed original ideas. A world where I didn’t take the risks the insights called for—including making bad pitch presentations. A world where I didn’t test my ideas in the real world to see if they translated into impact.
That’s the world I’d regret on my deathbed. A LinkedIn post made me think about my deathbed? That's quite a turn of events. I am laughing, and my spirits are back up.
And God knows that sometimes spirits are all it takes! (no pun intended)