Crowdfunding, Pop-Up Drama, and Instagram’s Big Bet On Long-Form With Team FFW

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Speaker B: You know I am all about making those smart swaps in your business that reduce friction and reduce your costs. Right now the smartest swap you can make is moving to Omnisend. Omnisend is this email and SMS marketing platform that is super, super easy to use and they've just dropped their SMS pricing so you can now send a marketing SMS for a fraction of a cent. It's literally seven tenths of a cent to send a marketing SMS with Omnisend. Um, plus they will migrate you onto the platform from whatever email and SMS marketing tool you're using right now for free within five days when you sign up to a paid plan. We have a special offer for our Female Founder World community. If you use the code FFW35 you will get 35% off trying out Omnisend. You can head to the link in the show notes or just go to omnisend.com and check out the platform for yourself. Hey everyone, welcome back to your weekly business group chat by Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine, I'm the host and um, the creator of Female Founder World

Speaker C: and I uh, am Paige. I am one of the co founders of Benny and a contributor here at Female Founder World. So excited.

Speaker B: We haven't done one of these like group chat conversations in a while and there's like quite a bit of newsy stuff plus like just team updates that I wanted to go over. We don't have Nat on the call today, it's just the two of us. But Paige, can we kick off with an update on Benny if you're, if you're new to the show, Benny is Paige's better for energy drink brand Stockton Target. And you've got a uh, very interesting fundraising campaign story happening at the moment. What are you guys doing?

Speaker C: Yes, so it all came very organically and it's been a lot of fun. So it's something we've thought about a lot. But we're doing an equity crowdfund right now. So essentially allowing like literally anyone, you don't even need to be accredited to invest into Benny as a part of like essentially a ah, special purpose vehicle. So all under one line on our cap table. So Backing up a little bit. How this came to be is we did an SPV earlier this year with Jacqueline, um, Johnson's platform, Cherub, which was awesome. It helps you connect to angel investors. If you guys haven't checked it out, it was wonderful. Um, but it's only available for US Based investors. And we are a Canadian brand, launched the business in Canada, so we were getting so much. You know, we always get this when we launch in Target, do anything for the U.S. uh, we get our comments from our Canadians wanting to participate, which is awesome. And it was something that we floated years ago with Benny. I know equity crowdfunding, some really cool businesses have done it in the past. It's almost like a Kickstarter, but for equity. Like you are actually investing in the business. And I think, yeah, it was something that we, you know, were nervous about years ago because we almost felt like there was like a stigma around it, but there was just so much interest that we were like, you know what? Now is the time. Let's do it. We're kind of at this size where I don't think we could do this kind of like offering in the future. I think we'll be a little bit more at like a venture scale. So we kind of saw this as our last, like, moment to let our true community supporters invest. And we wish we did it earlier. It's been really

Speaker B: good. So rather than using a platform, you're literally, you're just doing it yourself. So you're.

Speaker C: So we are, you know, great, great question, Jasmine. We are using a platform. Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. Who are you using?

Speaker C: So the thing that's annoying is it's very country by country, but I guess for a lot of people with their businesses, you probably are based primarily in one country. So we're using Front Funder, which is a Canadian platform. It's similar to, I want to say like a we funder or like a republic would probably be similar. I haven't looked too much into the US or Cherub is an option that you could have in the US So far. It's been really great. We. So one of the pieces that like really motivated us is Tara Bosch. Uh, so she's the founder of Snackish and smartsuites is one of our earliest angel investors. And she shared at, uh, her exit with SmartSuite, so they sold for like $400 million. Um, that, you know, bringing generational wealth and just such an opportunity for folks that don't always get that opportunity was the most motivating and rewarding part of her journey. And I think that is totally our goal with this. And as a consumer product that is literally like under $3, pretty much anyone can buy a Benny. And we know like, our community can be owners of the business and be the biggest brand evangelist. So it was something we hemmed and hot on Jasmine for so long. We talked to so many founders on like, is this like, worth it? Because it is a pretty high lift. Um, the diligence was really intense. I had to do like, I'm sure similar to a pre big investor, but because it's like a public offering, almost a lot of diligence and then a lot of like communication. So obviously like anything that's the biggest piece. But we have a friend. I'm all over the place, but I know I wanted to bring some tips. We have a friend who. He's, uh, the largest equity crowdfund or he had the largest equity crowdfund campaign in Canada and he's raised like over $3 million for his tech company with equity crowdfunding, which is pretty insane. Um, in like a day. Which goals.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Yeah, he's insane. Um, his platform is bringing retail investors, so really it works. But we took his tips and his number one biggest tip was to build a wait list for investors. So that is what we did. Probably later than we could have. Maybe a month before we launch or. Yeah, a month ahead of launching our front funder, we would send very, like plain text written from me page to our community, inviting them to join the wait list for this opportunity. And we had like, I want to say over a thousand people on the wait list. Not obviously every single one of them has converted, but a lot of them have. Um, and that was a really, really, I don't. I would say great hot tip and content, honestly around this has gone really viral. My co founder does really great viral content and we, I think raised like 60,000 doll the weekend from her, like, viral content, which. Easy.

Speaker B: Okay. All right. Well, I feel like it's a really interesting avenue for people who are looking at, okay, I've got a strong community. Maybe a lot of investors aren't getting it, but the community will get it. And that could be a good way to. To get the cash in the bank that you need. I think it's interesting and also, like, what a way to have your customers just really bought in and become evangelists. Like then to have them financially incentivized in that way.

Speaker C: Totally. That's exactly what pushed us. So a friend who has another beverage company has raised over a million with them and she Says every time they have a new launch, like they launch at Costco, their investors from the platform are running to Costco. They're telling everyone. And I'm like, as a community, forward brand, like, this is the next like frontier. You know, we, um, we are getting angel investors that are creators. Why wouldn't we get our community to kind of do the same? That's the last piece. I'll say, Jasmine. We've actually engaged with a lot of creators through the platform, both in the US And Canada that have been really excited to angel invest. And I know that's such a buzzy conversation that this is like the lowest lift way, um, to bring in creators and just everyone, you know, angel investing is like sexy and cool now.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love this. I want to talk about this Instagram news. This feels like a big one for everyone. Did you see that Instagram is now going to be posting 90 minute horizontal videos?

Speaker C: Insane. That blows my mind.

Speaker B: Oh, interesting.

Speaker C: Am I watching on like, watch us in a year, I'm gonna be like, of course I'm watching an hour of my Instagram.

Speaker B: You know, I. They're obviously trying to compete with YouTube. They're trying to compete with podcasts. And the new product is going to be called Features. And the idea is that uh, you'll be able to refer, ah, viewers to a full video from like a short form reel on the platform. Which is also really interesting because we publish the podcast on Spotify and Spotify is going the other way where you can upload short form videos to try and get people to then watch your long form Spotify podcast. And then, you know, Instagram's trying to do the reverse and flip it the other way where they're getting people who are already watching reels to go and consume something longer form because obviously it's easier for like these platforms to monetize. You can embed ads, all of the things, uh, if you have long form content. And I think the short form platforms kind of figured that out and try to work out how they can get a piece of that advertising revenue.

Speaker C: Yeah, kind of wild. I'm like when you're. I wasn't thinking this before, but when you're explaining it, Jasmine, I'm like, is there going to be some kind of mass consolidation of all of these platforms? Like everything is doing like, can we just have one? Can we just, can

Speaker B: we just have one? Totally

Speaker C: enough.

Speaker B: I know you have to pay for them all as well. Um, but I also thought it was interesting who they've invited onto, uh, to be able to use the feature. Because you know when Meta rolls out these new features, they don't just open it up to everyone, they start letting select people in to be able to test it. And Emma Greed, uh, the Skims co founder, the author and host of Aspire with Emma Greed, she's one of the people who will be on it, uh, which is fascinating cause I'm sure that she will be posting the long form podcast content on there directly from, you know, what you would see in the podcast feed.

Speaker C: Yeah, it kind of blows my mind. I feel like my content diet, like I'm so curious to like pull, like who is this for? Because I am like so traditional. Like we were saying before the show, I like to feel far from my work when I'm having my like hour long moment, you know, before bed. I'm watching like traders, like I'm watching something that is so ridiculous. But I know YouTube is like so massive, the vlogs are so huge. And every creator, it seems my co founder and I were talking about this. Every creator I feel like has been pointing to their YouTube over the last like year. Like everyone I follow has been like, watch my vlogs. And I don't go, go to the YouTube to do that. But if I'm clicking then into Instagram, maybe I see myself actually getting trapped here. I get it.

Speaker B: I've also seen a lot of the short form horizontal videos seeming to perform quite well on Instagram. A lot of it's been coming up in my feed, which feels counterintuitive, but maybe it's the platform testing it and pushing that kind of content. Uh, I also saw maybe about three months ago, um, a youth media brand called Centennial World. They're based out of Australia. They've got a, um, a Canadian founder, her name's Lauren Meisner and she has been posting long form vertical podcast content to TikTok for quite a while with the message on the top where it says watch this like a podcast. And she said that she's finding a lot of people consuming her, her podcast that way where they are actually sitting and watching you know, 10 however many minutes of content on TikTok in that way and literally consuming it like a podcast. Which is very interesting because these platforms are obviously so better for discoverability compared to a, ah, Spotify or an Apple podcast. You can just discover things that are interesting to you rather than having to be like a, um, like a fan of a show and subscribe to it. And I find that very uh, interesting for people who are in the media world and also just the convergence of brand marketing content and media content. Because we will definitely see, I think brands then get into this because we always see with content trends, it's always like the creators, the media entrepreneurs who do it first and then the brands adopt it because they are competing for the same eyeballs on the same platforms.

Speaker C: Yeah. How would you take that as a brand, Jasmine of like, should we start investing into long form content, do you think?

Speaker B: I don't think we, I don't think we should be investing into long form content now, but I would be exploring doing like horizontal content. I would also be very curious about how the algorithm changes because the thing is with new features on Instagram we see again and again that the platform pushes accounts that use these features. So as soon as you get access to it's ah, it's literally going to be called features. As soon as you get access to features where you can publish this longer form content. If you do it, that's an opportunity for visibility and um, to get pushed out by meta. So even just for that reason, once it becomes available it might be worthwhile. But I do think that it is a very different skill set. It's a different, it's an art like doing long form content and being able to keep people interested versus doing short form content or like aesthetic images. And you'll need a tote like to resource your team totally differently. But I do think it's worth like having a plan in place and thinking about it so that you can make the most of it when the feature actually does drop. But I wouldn't do it yet.

Speaker C: Goodness, they keep us on our toes.

Speaker B: Also just interesting stat. Um, I saw that YouTube accounts for 15% of all TV watch time in the US as of August this year and Netflix is quite a lot, like nearly half, around 8%.

Speaker C: That blows my mind. Yeah. See I would think like thank God they share this because if I had the opportunity to invest in Netflix ads or YouTube ads right now, I would be like, oh my God, Netflix. How cool is that?

Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. Hailey Bieber and Lauren Ratner, the CEO of Road, did uh, a talk with Fortune and I've been seeing the clips all over my feed, but I never watched the whole thing. I'd love to talk about that and like what the takeaways were from that.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I thought it was so interesting. So it's been going pretty viral obviously everything Haley goes so viral. But Haley and Lauren have been talking about how the ELF opportunity and their acquisition from ELF was a surprise to them, which is cool, I guess that is. You know, they were only what, three years, less than three years into the business. So I guess how long have you been massaging those relationships? But I thought that was really interesting. And they'd shared that they'd taken the brand like, as far as they kind of thought that they could and that the timing was really perfect because prior to ELF, it was, I believe they were still just D2C. They hadn't sold yet into Sephora, so they needed that like, infrastructure to take them to the next level. And I will say, as a brand that is probably scaling way beyond our means, I get it. Like, I'm like, huh, you know, like, it's a, it's a totally different skill set. And I think rock on to, uh, Road To. Obviously it was an amazing sale. It was a great opportunity. But to kind of take it as far as you can and then to stay on kind of for that next journey. So they were talking about how they still. Hailey is making pretty much every decision. Love that. And I think that acquisition story is like, obviously the dream case study for anyone. But what is super interesting about it is just that, like true partnership. And I think so many founders see that exit as an exit. Like, I'm out of here, exit to stage left. But it really is, I think in this instance, like a partnership and someone, um, that's coming on to help you partner to the next stage.

Speaker B: Do you know what I thought was also really interesting? Uh, and what I think is the difference between what uh, has worked with Road and maybe why some other like celeb brands don't work. They said something in the conversation that it was like people on the social team can literally just hand a phone to Haley and get her approval on a clip and then they post it same day. And I don't think a lot of these celebrity brands have that same feedback loop in being able to use the, like that celebrity founder as the face and in content in the same way. Uh, but Haley obviously really gets how these platforms work. Like she's built her career on these platforms and so she's got that quick sign off cycle and that direct relationship with the social team.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I loved that. I feel like Bay does a nice job of that. With shame. I'm trying to think of any other celebrity brands that actually feel really tapped in. No, I thought that was super interesting.

Speaker B: No, I mean, no one does it like Road for sure.

Speaker C: Of course.

Speaker B: Did you see this? This is like a gear change. But did you see the Good American Pop up debacle.

Speaker C: Did I ever? Did I ever. Okay, I need your thoughts first. Jasmine, as an in person operator on all of this,

Speaker B: can you share what happened? Do you have the background?

Speaker C: Yes. So. Well, at first I was so confused. I think, you know, the Internet's always in an uproar. So I was like, what is this? Like is this something worth feeling a type of way about? But good American had a big pop up in New York City. I want to say this was like two, three weekends ago. And they got a ton of backlash because they'd sent out these invites to creators that were very like tailored to them one to one. It's an exclusive invite. Here's your rsvp, here's your time slot to show up. And these creators were booking flights on their own dime in their hotels to take the opportunity to be there at the pop up and they spent all day waiting in line and never even made it into the pop up. So. So uh, such a mess. I

Speaker B: know it's a tricky one. I saw some people sharing what that email was. I do think the key thing is the time slot. Offering a crate or anyone a time slot to visit an in person activation gives you the, the idea or the thought that you, you're booked and you think it's gonna be like any like walking into a restaurant and that's clearly just not at all what it was. It felt like something that was almost like open to the public and not exclusive at all. So I, I'm sure that they are having some conversations internally about it. But as someone who does in person events, you know, for a living, it made me feel like very anxious watching this M1 get torn down on tick tock because felt like they just made the one mistake that you just, you can't afford to make when people are coming out into the, into the real world to experience something like the transaction is so much uh, more weighty than just someone engaging with something online where they can tap out. Like if someone is leaving their home to do something you need to over deliver, like you need to undersell um it and then over deliver that is genuine. That is something that I feel like we try and do with Summer. Quite a, quite a lot of the time is really undersell what we're doing and then over deliver on the day little things like in our messaging we'll say we're serving light snacks and drinks but really we've allocated like a salad bowl plus snacks plus plus drinks for everyone who's in attendance. But I just think if you are doing an in person event. Like the one takeaway from this is go above and beyond and don't over promise something that you, you can't deliver on. And, and also I think they've missed another rule of thumb which is like if you are hosting an open in person event where there is some kind of um, registration but it's not a personal invitation like you can expect around 50% of the people to show up, if people are paying for a ticket that number is way higher. It's like 90% of people in my experience that will show up. But if you are inviting someone and it feels like an exclusive thing that they are RSVPing to and it feels like a personal invitation, that number is not 50% like you are going to get a lot more people actually show on the day and I think that Good American has like just. It is either someone that doesn't have a lot of experience with in person programming and events or, or they've just really underestimated the power of the brand and people actually wanting to show up on the day.

Speaker C: Yeah, you read my mind Jasmine. That's exactly what I kind of went to in that they probably way, you know, underestimated I guess the demand and that's a tricky thing like you don't want the other case but it just feels like it's such a icky taste in your mouth, you know you've lost a consumer, you know, for life. But beyond that it just kind of builds this like vibe of a lack of respect for your own community which I think that is what hurts the most. I haven't seen anything come out on like a make good. I'm sure they're working on that um, because they did have you know like the one to one relationship with these people. But I'm curious on, on where it goes from there and you know, what are the learnings because everyone wants that long line in front of their, you know. I know. In front of their pop up.

Speaker B: I know but you can't be doing that if people are flying in for it.

Speaker C: No, definitely a lot of learnings I think for the good American team and for everyone watching on you know, best in class and maybe missing the mark on irl. But speaking of irl, Jasmine, we need a summit update. I'm so excited. How are you feeling?

Speaker B: I know we're two and a half weeks out which is like ah, so scary. Um, but it's going, everything is going to, everything is going well. I think like the big crunchy thing around in person events is like managing cash flow. Like that's the one thing that I'm constantly a lesson that I'm learning again and again. We don't have in this business. We don't have a line of credit, we don't have investors. Everything is just cash in the bank. And so before summit we. Yeah. And then the way that your invoicing works with in person events and this is for anyone building a media brand is you usually have 30, 60 or 90 day windows of getting paid and your money is going out way before for your partnership revenue is coming in. So we work all throughout the year and then the money has to be in the bank in like early October to see us out through like January, which is like a pretty big thing to be trying to do when you are a small business. And um, so that's something that I found stressy. But like now the money's in the bank and where we're all good but it's, it's stressful in the lead up to it. And then the other big thing that we're focusing um, on and that takes up the most time that I don't think people see from behind the scenes is the speaker lineup. I posted a video about this about how we um, pick the speakers. But I really try and bring in a mix of those like just iconic business leaders. So we have Tara Bosch, you mentioned earlier, who built SmartSuites, we've got um, Whitney Wolfhard from Bumble, we have Susan Yara who built Nutrium, sold it to Elf, and then the people who I think are building the next big brands and understand what it takes to get traction in 2026. So that is people like you. Paige is one example of that. Um, I also have like Hyla from 437. We have the founders of Good Girl Snacks. So we really try and like make that balance of the speaker who has been through and built something that they've sold and then someone who is like up and coming and we think has yet doing something right in 2026 so they can speak to like the current situation. But we've got a full day programing. Everything's kicking off at 11 and going through till 4:30. We also have something a little bit different this year. Have you seen us doing the group chat thing? I want to talk to you about this.

Speaker C: Oh my gosh, how have I missed this?

Speaker B: Okay, so when people buy their tickets, it's not something that I've really hyped up because again under promise over deliver, but when you check out you can opt in if you want to, to sharing your WhatsApp number with us and completing a survey. And we are matching you into WhatsApp groups with founders in your local area while we're trying to get as many people with the community who are in their local city. And the real insight behind that is that we are constantly seeing people come summit alone, which I love, because they know that the people in the room are going to be the kind of people that they want to meet and get to know, um, and be friends with. And then, uh, also just people really having that need for in person connection and community. And so we are matching up folks based on like business stage category, making sure that we don't have, you know, any directly competing brands in the same group and putting all together in these curated, very small WhatsApp groups of like eight to 10 people. And then you can actually see those person in real life people in real life at Summit and continue the relationship all throughout the year and then hopefully see those folks again at summit in 2027. So this is a new thing that we haven't done before. It's incredibly manual. Um, someone asked me yesterday, like, what AI tool are you using to do this? And my brain, we are not using an AI tool to do this. Uh, and it's incredibly manual. But I just feel like the community and the connection that you make at an event is the difference between an event being good and it being like the best thing you went to that year.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I love that. Jasmine. I was gonna say as an attendee, uh, I would say this might have been three years ago. I met a wonderful founder there and we're still in touch. And she's super helpful. We're always swapping resources. She's also speaking at this next summit, so it's just like, so fun. You betcha. Charlotte from Charge Harms and every business that she's got, um, but she was just like a random girl I bump into. I think we were probably just like both in line for the washroom. And we've stayed in touch for years. And I think like, you know, everyone probably listening knows, but those connections are really what, like, supercharged your business. And I love how easy you're making it, Jasmine.

Speaker B: And that's what it's all about. And like, I hear so many stories exactly like that. And I wanted to find a way to make it just a little bit more intentional, you know, so that folks can, uh, not, not those. Those moments weren't so accidental. You can still have those like, moments of Serendipity where you bump into someone that you love because that's what the room is filled with. But I wanted to be able to curate that for you so you have the people that you're looking out for when you get there.

Speaker C: Love it. No, I can't wait.

Speaker B: VIP is sold out. We still have some general admission tickets. I'll put the link in the show notes if anyone wants to grab theirs, but November 15, New York City, Chelsea Piers. I cannot wait.

Speaker C: I need an outfit. Any stylist listening?

Speaker B: So nice to chat with you as well. That's the show, guys. We'll see you next week.

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