72 and a bit hours, half a prawn sandwich (too excited to eat the rest), 1 phone call, 14 WhatsApps, 6 emojis and we secured £100,000 into the bank. This has to be a Guinness World record, Bob? Actually, wasn’t the Guinness World Record chap who gave out the record certificates called Bob?
Anyway, and without further ado, I unofficially present a Guinness World Record to our white soap knight! Unfortunately, he is not called Bob (imagine if he was), he is actually called Simon. Simon, I probably should have checked if I am allowed to mention your real name, or whether you would have preferred for me to use a more exotic code name, like Michael Bublé. (Like what I did there? Some of you will read that as Bublé and some of you would have read that as Bubble. Nothing like a good soap pun).
Simon, again, I am sorry that I had to bring the shot ski with me to our 0900 am breakfast meeting this week. I was on route to Harrogate following our meeting for a friend's wedding and the shot ski is rather famous. It was not my intention for us all to do a celebratory shot out of the ski at 0928 am, I promise!
For anyone wondering what a shot ski is, it is a snow ski with 4 holes drilled into the ski, which fits in 4 shot glasses. For my wedding, my brother-in-law (named; Griff, A mountain guide, heli-ski guide, ex-Wales youth rugby player, 6ft 6inch and a very cool guy - you get the picture) created the shot ski and provided 11 litres of Génépi, which ensured our wedding guests were suitably sozzled by 2000 pm. The ski is now infamous between friends and our home rugby club in Berwick-upon-Tweed, and so my ongoing duty is to bring the ski to any and all weddings my wife and I are invited to.
Here’s a picture of my mum arriving in London with the shot ski, ahead of our breakfast meeting with Simon, a picture of Will taking the shot ski to our meeting with Simon and a picture, post investment confirmation, with Simon, Will and I.
(Got to have a little bit of fun. It can’t all be work, work, work).
On a serious note, Simon, thank you for believing in our vision and supporting us in bringing Bob to market. Very exciting times ahead.
So, what have we been up to this week:
- Securing investment and pledges, and completing the signing of all the legal documents.
- Assessing the little rash and reviewing the soap feedback
- Redeveloping the top of the thingymabob product to help the ‘foam and feel’
- Developing our new brand and website
- Planning out the foundations of our Kickstarter campaign
Louis, I know you don’t like detail so no need to read on. For everyone else, please find below a little more detail on the points above.
And when I say everyone else, I mean all 4 of you, as it actually turns out that we now have a 4th reader, Uncle John. Uncle John is my wife's Uncle.
Uncle John gave us some great feedback this week on the different types of water we get in the UK, highlighting the importance of ensuring our soap is both good for soft water and hard water. Something about the North being hard and the South being soft (maybe we can create a North / South marketing campaign about being from the North or South, soft or hard, and linking it to our types of soap. Marketing team, take note).
More detail, please….
Investment
We are now up to £185,000 in pledges for this round, with £108,500 paid into the bank this week (‘beers on you Mike wheeyyheey.’ No Louis, I will be spending most of the money on soap, prototypes, building the team, getting the product to market, launching on Kickstarter, getting Max a moustache trim, and paying for Will’s monday.com project management software upgrades - not beer).
We are making great progress, but ongoing momentum is key. My focus is 95% on securing the final pledges of this round and the other 5% supporting Will and Max with aligning and connecting the vision with the doing and execution (Will, with Max’s support, is amazing at the execution part, which is why I can focus on securing the investment).
Btw, If you want to invest in this round, you best contact us quickly, as I have just come from a phone call with Halim, our first investor and Bobliever, who has some more intros for me. Every time Halim makes an intro, we secure investment. The man is a machine! I don’t think he sleeps and I am in awe of his energy! ‘Your network is your net worth’ is my favourite saying Halim has shared with me so far, and so as always, thank you for introducing your net worth to Bob, Halim.
Simon has also confirmed that his wife is reviewing Bob, but she may be a bit more difficult to convince than him… Investing in a company that aims to make your husband smile in the shower while he washes his bits and bobs, until they are clean and smell fresh, what lady, or man, could say no to that?
(Maybe we should be targeting men's partners to buy Bob for them.. Hmmmmm, now there's a thought. Marketing team. Take note).
Back to the drawing board
This week has been one step back to go two steps forward (yes, I know, it is normally the other way round, but bear with me) with our Thingymabob product. ‘Foam and feel’ are two key outcomes we are trying to deliver with the ultimate aim for the product to be better than using a normal bar of soap. With this in mind, the beta boys (our design agency) took to the showers with our soap and their test rigs, following my 42-something showers the week before. The result of their tests: FAILED. (Remember kids, you never FAIL, you LEARN and you get one step closer to SUCCEEDING every time you don’t succeed). The reason the test failed is not because it wasn’t foaming (it’s actually very good at this), but because the feeling was not there. What we discovered was that by encasing all of the soap, you lose a vital component of a natural wash. The component of feeling. We all love the lathering, but we are all missing the feeling of soap touching your skin directly, the feeling of something gliding over your bits and bobs, moisturising, and washing, alongside the look of foam. Therefore we had to go back one step and redesign the top delivery mechanism of Bob to be able to go two steps forward, to deliver both the foam and feeling, which are required to deliver the perfect wash.
Hello Kappus, time to talk soap
After a combined 104 showers across 8 different men (the majority of them were me testing), I can confirm that the first batch of Bob bar soap formulation failed overall too. A great start on the ingredients, which are good for the planet, and a great start on foaming formulation however;
We didn't feel clean after a shower and we didn’t smell clean after a shower. Especially after a night of five-a-side football and a full day's travel from London to Manchester, pitching for investment at Britain’s Got Startups final, and then Manchester to London. The shower following this day resulted in me smelling pre-shower, washing with our first version of soap, and then coming out of the shower to my wife telling me I still smell and to get back in the shower and use some proper soap. (It was this line that has resulted in Will booking flights to Germany on Tuesday next week, to meet with the CEO, the head of sales and the R&D team, to ensure we are aligned in creating the perfect soap for men's bits, bobs and of course bodies.
Below is a drawing that illustrates that we are 50% towards the goal of achieving 100% of our desired soap outcomes for the perfect wash (in the words of Ron Burgundy, it works 60% of the time, every time, unfortunately, doesn’t work for us);
So there you have it, a week in the life of Mike, with a more on-time email update this week.
Much love, I’m off for a Guinness or two this weekend, given the unofficial Guinness World Record Simon set. Perhaps I can also secure a few more investors at this wedding by utilising the shot ski to its full potential.
Next week we;
- Get to test the next version of the Thingymabob prototype
- Fly to Switzerland then drive into Germany, to review our soap formulation and create the next version. Along with discussing how we can rollout Bob into Germany.
- Secure the next bit of cash and investment into the bank
- Sign off our new brand and website design (exciting)
- Begin to develop and create our Kickstarter campaign assets
Don’t forget to share the link below with your friends, to take us to 5 active Bob email readers.
https://welcometobob.com/pages/join-our-waiting-list
Bob
P.S. Thank you to Adam Beasant for being the only person to confirm that he thought of option 3 whilst reading my late update earlier this week, resulting in me winning the founder's £1 bet. I will be sure to pop the £1 in a charity pot.
Wait, does that mean with Adam reading the email, we now have 6 people reading this? Marketing team. Take note,
It might just be working.