About Ashley Friedlein
I've been working in professional community building for 20yrs+ since founding Econsultancy (a community for marketers learning about digital marketing) back in 1999 and, more recently, Guild, a platform for professional communities and networking.
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How do I get this look? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XBGLEkcczvq7aDjBw7G0t26vcajfisYN/view?usp=sharing
Comments from Adviser update 13 Oct 2020
I was on the go this evening so poor connection but I caught most of it. Some comments/thoughts whilst I remember:Raise* You're really at Series A stage? You looked at the "SaaS napkin" (https://medium.com/point-nine-news/what-does-it-take-to-raise-capital-in-saas-in-2019-26829debef29). You said you're raising ~£2m? If so is that not a lot too little? You could be going for £5m+ I think? Let the VCs do the valuation? Or give a range - say you're raising £2m-£7m - you only 'need' £2m but you'd take £7m (but pretty much still for ~20% of the equity so a much higher valuation)?Matchmaking* This is something we're looking at for Guild. I'm starting to look at various services (including AI) so we should swap notes. Target Markets* Academia... pain in the arse in my experience. Including Business Schools. They should be progressive but they really live in the Dark Ages, claim they have no budgets, and move at the speed of a dead snail. Avoid until they come begging is my advice ;). The whole of academia is (deservedly) soon to face a digital Armageddon. * At Guild we've targeted tech companies also. I run a group for 'SaaS Marketing Leaders' with >100 members. They've got plenty of money. But they're really not very good at 'community'. Nor 'content' often. They need a lot of hand holding. Might be harder than you'd think. Community-based Marketing (for B2B)* I've written a lot about this! A series of articles beginning with https://guild.co/blog/what-is-community-based-marketing/
Recent Comments
I have an acount on FB but never use it. I've never been on Instagram and don't intend to. WhatsApp I use but obviously with Guild we're building an ad-free alternative for businesses to use.
Something to be encouraged by is that Facebook use is declining. Instagram and WhatsApp (both owned by FB of course although most people don't know that) are growing. However younger people already see WhatsApp as for 'their parents' and tend now to be on Snap and TikTok. Neither of which FB own. So things do change quite quickly and FB-owned platforms are not necessarily set to stay dominant. (the alternatives are not necessarily any 'better' from a data/privacy point of view of course).