Ryan Shank updates PhoneWagon's fundraising: a $300K check would bring the round to $1.5M toward a $2M goal, with another potential $500K from a VC. The team hired videographer Amber and said goodbye to Kane. A partnership with a Techstars-backed company will handle SaaS integrations, a critical gap Ryan says will unlock faster customer acquisition.
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I'm gonna vlog you vlogging him. Hahaha. If you guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. We're building PhoneWagon from the ground up. We do it every single day, 7 days a week. We're back on that vlog game. You guys are following along. You're wagoners, you're pioneers. Started off this morning, 9 AM, we had a phone call with someone that is really, really, really close to investing in our round. They're coming in for a $300,000 check. I had to do a call with him, one of the managing directors, his chief investment officer, and then I brought in one of my advisors. So we were all on this conference call. It was an hour long. It was actually awesome. We went through our deck. We went through the financial model. I thought it was a super good call. He said he's gonna follow up. I shot him a text after and I was like, hey, super pumped to work with you guys. So if he comes into the round, then our round is at $1.5 million so far. Right now we have $1.2. They come in for $3, $1.5. We're raising up to $2 mil. And then we have one, we have a couple more people that we're talking to, Well, one is a $500K check that I think is gonna come into the round. They're an awesome VC firm. I'm gonna update you guys on that in a little bit. But I do wanna update you on something, a little bit of the art of the deal. So I was talking with Alex, managing director of Techstars, and I was like, hey, tell him about the round, who's in it, who's not in it, that sort of thing. And I was telling him about a couple of these guys, and he was like, oh, I know those guys really well. Should I email them? And this is called the nudge, okay? So he was basically like, I know them, I'm gonna email them. He shot up an email like, hey, heard you're talking to Ryan. I've known him for 3 years, it's just the best thing, blah, blah, blah, he's a really good, you know, all this stuff, right? So he's sort of nudging them from a third-party perspective, and then like what that does just psychologically, it's like you're just getting social validation, right? So it's like boom, he's getting that. One of my other advisors also nudged him, so now he's gotten nudged twice, plus we've already had, you know, 3 or 4 meetings. Plus I know that he's out raising money for his fund, and he's, I actually just heard today that he's oversubscribed for his fund. and they need to deploy that money. Who's better to deploy it than the Wagon, am I right? So anyway, so they're gonna come, I think they're gonna come on board, but that's one that's a little bit further. Our next meeting with them, he's meeting with me and Mike, our VP of product, next Tuesday. We're going over to their office, which by the way, their office is literally half a block from here. Like all the VCs are like right around Flatiron, right where we are. We're 22nd and 5th, they're like 21st and 5th, right across from Pound Sporting Clothes. So anyway, that's what happened. So the call earlier today, hopefully they commit that extra 3, get us at 1.5, and then boom, these guys come in next Tuesday. We hit the 2 million and we're off to the races. The other thing that we did today, we got a new videographer. We got Amber. She's slicing and dicing that new vlogging. So super pumped about that. Kane is on to bigger and better things. We're gonna miss you, Kane. Tonight, by the way, you guys are gonna see in the vlog tonight, we're taking Kane out. Roll the clip with the cupcakes. Out loud? Out loud. Thanks so much for the awesome work this summer. We wouldn't be here without you. Good luck with everything. Ryan and Tony Beckman. This is so heartfelt. Thank you, Ryan. Aw. Right? So sweet. That was the cupcake clip. So you saw that. Birthday candle, I don't know what to do for like going away. Do you get a candle, do you not get a candle? We got a candle. I didn't know what song to sing, 'cause happy birthday didn't really work. So, oh, by the way, by the way, one of the Techstars companies, as you guys will see, they help us with data. So one of our pain points, right, is that like we're building a product and we're trying to ship features, features, features, and all of our customers need all these integrations. So we met with them, they actually do integrations for SaaS companies. We're gonna be able to work with them, they're gonna help us integrate into all these other platforms so that we can acquire customers faster, so that we can grow bigger and better and take over the world. If we build one for someone else, it'll help you. And then if we build one for you guys, it'll help someone else. I mean, if this works and we're able to get our integrations out, I mean, honestly, this could like just propel us just in terms of like— that's like our biggest gap right now, to be honest, is integrations. It's like where I feel like we're losing deals because we're not integrating with these platforms that is like a core requirement, you know? It's like a must-have. And they're like, look, I like it, but it's like I can't move off this. Like, we have to have our integrations. We report out of here, right? We report out of just call tracking. It's like one little piece, so it totally makes sense. And that's the ditch. So now we're gonna go and we're gonna go grab dinner with Kane 'cause it's his last day. And so long as you can, that's the vlog for today. Poosh!
