Frequent readers may know there’s more talk of the universe and her desires/impact on The Key than one might find in the average business blog. Even writing that, I realize that our mission to write a new story here means we’re often thinking/talking/acting as a lifestyle company as much as we are a business. Can’t really separate the two now, can we?
So the press coverage recap of a successful A Round announcement really tells as much about how we work and what we’re trying to do as it showcases our media chops.
Read our Mixhalo Case Study here.
It starts with a friendly intro from a former colleague to a buddy looking to find a firm for the company he’s advising. We meet. It’s not a great fit, but we totally hit it off as actual people. Talk kids and private school culture in SF and - as is wont to happen in this teeny city - run into each other out and about.
A few months later, I attended the St. Ignatius Downtown Business Lunch - an annual event slowly evolving to include more female alum, as the oldest among us near 45 and qualify as ‘Business People.’
This year, the featured speaker was Gianna Toboni, a producer and correspondent at VICE, and a woman both significantly younger and significantly more impressive than I.
At the table with me, my brother and my dad (at the brink of retiring from an impressive 40-year stint as a favorite teacher and spiritual guide at SI), was another younger alum, who shared both the rad, envy-inducing hair of Gianna AND the stop-you-in-your-tracks presence of someone who’s about her shit. She mentioned a new company she was working at, and we went our separate ways after fangirling the speaker and talking about our parallel lives as mothers of four.
Months later, a new business lead. Marc, from the first memory, had recently taken over as CEO at Mixhalo, the company from the second. They’d raised an A Round, set a new course for the business, and were ready to go big.
We had a BLAST with the pitch. First, Kat crushed on a creds document that highlighted both our background and personality. We’d just hired Kira, and she helped wrangle the pieces as the Mamas among us straddled the madness of May -- school picnics and graduations and vacations and more. Not just for us, but for the Mixhalo team, too.
Our first discovery call happened while Kat and I were each home with our kids...3, 4, 5 and 6 at the time...while Thomas, leading the RFP, was home with twins at the end of middle school. A check-in later was while I was at a food truck park in Portland on the way to graduation -- postponed because my 5-year old had fallen on his face during the original time and needed snuggles (and lots of BandAids).
From start to finish, it has been a blast -- and an all-out sprint -- from winning the business in a laughter-filled pitch (that also allowed us to showcase expertise); to a deep dive with founders (and legit rockstars) Michael Einziger and Ann Marie Simpson; to coordination with Foundry Group and Sapphire Ventures and others involved in the round; through a sweaty-like-whoa trip through New York to meet with journalists; to celebrating the pull-through of new company positioning in stories that have been rolling in this week.
This is how we like to work. As a true partner with a seat at the table. We’re in for hard conversations about positioning and strategy, but also to sit alongside the team as we down donuts and cross fingers that all the work will payoff as we hope.
With a few potential customers already added to the pipeline as a result of a great launch, and some big news announcements coming soon, we’re all in on democratizing sound with Mixhalo and look forward to our first in-person, in-ear immersion in an audio experience we hadn’t before imagined was possible.
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