Office Hours: I closed a $4.2M seed round in my first 90 days on the job as co-founder and CEO of Expectful. I’m Nathalie Walton. AMA!Featured

NathalieWalton·Jan 14, 2024

Posted in:Venture Capital Office Hours Fundraising Startups

Hi Elphas!

I’m Nathalie Walton, an exited-founder, a board advisor, an investor, a writer, and a speaker.

Before I found my calling as an entrepreneur, I spent over a decade scaling the ranks of some of the world's most prestigious companies: Google, Airbnb, J.P. Morgan, and eBay.

In my 28 months as the Co-Founder & CEO of Expectful, I closed a $4.2M seed round in my first 90 days on the job. I pivoted the company to a more expansive opportunity and led it to a successful sale to Babylist. I achieved this by building a cult-following brand with 175K followers on IG, 125+ press mentions, and viral relationships in the influencer/celebrity community.

I thrive in advising both start-ups and later-stage organizations; I particularly excel in leading M&A, fundraising, founder-led PR, turnarounds, leaving corporate for a start-up, and work-life balance as a mom.

During my downtime, I enjoy yoga, meditation and languages. I also love traveling, which means finding a way to travel with my toddler. Last year, we visited 7 countries with a three-year old (I love sharing tips and tricks on making this work).

Ask me anything about exits, M&A, fundraising, founder-led PR, building brands, landing your first speaking opportunity, mental health, running a company with a small child, or anything else!

ElphaStaff·Jan 14

Thanks so much for joining us @NathalieWalton!Elphas – please ask @NathalieWalton your questions before Friday, January 19th. @NathalieWalton may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites 🔥👍🏾➕

kerenboiman·Jan 15

@NathalieWalton happy to connect and learn from your experience! Sounds very impressive!!

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Thank you @kerenboiman! I hope you find the Q&A helpful!

Jani133·Jan 16

Hi Nathalie, how did you went from having this great idea towards validating it for actual product-market fit? And what were your first steps in building Expectful? What would your advice be to people stuck with an idea for a product and looking to build it out?

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi @jani33 - Great question!In fairness, I took over Expectful at an early stage - so there was already a product, but I can still answer your question. The key is to create a minimal viable product MVP and also, and I cannot emphasize this enough - share your ideas on social media to build a following.Here is an example - the founder of Expectful had a hypothesis that pregnancy-focused meditations could have a great impact on women. As a next step, he found a meditation artist to record several tracks and uploaded them to the Teachable platform (low cost, low budget = a dream MVP). After sharing this work with his community via email and social media, he noticed that there was a lot of interest in the product. People he didn't know were downloading the course, and there was clearly a demand.Figure out what is the best way to get your idea into the world - can you do this through a low-budget course, a reel, or a LinkedIn post? If you start to see people talking broadly about your idea, and sharing it with friends - it's likely that you are onto something and should continue iterating on your idea.

JuneKwon·Jan 16

Hi Nathalie, Thank you for taking the time to host an office hour and sharing your success stories. Would love to hear more from you! I am a new solopreneur with a clear MVP and a demo prototype to share my vision. I want to scale the team and onboard a tech lead, but not sure if I should try to raise fundraising first or if I should onboard a tech lead first with equity. What would you recommend? Please share any advise you have for raising funds for a very early stage startup. Thank you again for your time!

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

@JuneKwon - Great question. I'm someone who strongly believes in bootstrapping for as long as you can. Here's why: 1) It's easier to raise when you have a product you can share and have a team in place, and you'll likely get a higher valuation, but 2) You're likely going to discover that you need to pivot/evolve your original idea. Once you take on VC, you are up against a ticking time bomb of meeting certain milestones - and if you miss them, it's really hard to get back on track. Mentally and financially, you'll be in a better place if you wait to raise until you have the team in place and a good product to show. Additionally, you want this hire to be bought in, so they should be willing to take equity.

nishaiyer·Jan 17

Hi Nathalie! Thanks for the intro. I’m currently cofounder and CTO of CoNote.ai. My CEO and I are having fundamental value misalignment causing me to have to take a step back. Over the last year I have built the product and have taken it to market. I don’t feel the CEO has kept up his end of the bargain at all. I would love to connect on potential next steps I could suggest / any advice from you on that.

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

@nishaiyer First, I'm sorry that you are having this experience. It's incredibly frustrating.The first step is having a difficult conversation with your CEO to share your sentiment. If you've done this already - what happens when you share this feedback with your CEO? Are they defensive, or do they disagree?In either scenario, you need to decide what you want from the conversation. Is it for them to contribute more, is it to acknowledge your work, is for them to step down? Having this clarity will be helpful in shaping the conversation.One of the best investments I made in business school was taking a class called Managing Difficult Conversations - here's a short cut - there is a great book called " Difficult Conversations - How to Discuss What Matters Most" - I highly recommend reading it if you are uncomfortable about having this difficult conversation.If the difficult conversation fails and you are clear on what you want, it might be time to bring in a neutral third-party mediator to help you navigate the difficulty.In summary, get clear on what you want, have the difficult conversation, and, if necessary, bring in a mediator.

Claudia413·Jan 17

Hi Nathalie,Impressive intro! I would love to learn more about building relationships with (future) customers. I'm working on my own (first) startup with my partner and we are having a hard time to get user-test interviews scheduled to collect feedback on our tool. ( we do offer the testers something in return (free use of our tool) but maybe the incentive is too low?) Do you have any tips on how to go about this? How do you start to build a cult following brand? A bit of context: We have 0 sales and 0 followers on social media at the moment, we are now implementing payment partner and have just opened social accounts with the name of our product so we are starting from scratch everywhere.

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi @Claudia413Congrats on launching a start-up. It's a big first step.This is a great question - and one that I hear a lot. I always send people to this article, because Lenny does such an amazing job at outlining how this is achieved: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-biggest-consumer-apps-gotIf you want feedback, you will likely have to have a higher incentive. I had a similar problem, too, and once you increase the incentive to $50-$100 - I think you'll likely get some bites.I wouldn't worry about building your social media presence at the moment because growing a social media presence is an entirely different hurdle to tackle. I would recommend reaching out directly to your potential customers and increasing your incentive - it will give you helpful feedback, which will hopefully convert to a customer.It's a long journey but completely worth it!

Tajuana122·Jan 18

Hi Nathalie! Thanks so much for your time. What would you say were the key components to successfully building a cult-following brand for Expectful, and what role did social media and influencer relationships play in this process?

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi! The good news is that the key to building a "cult-following brand" is to build a cult-following product. At Expectful, we built a niche product that our users loved and shared with their friends. There isn't a secret to how our following grew. People who used our product were just eager to share it with others.Social media and influencers did help us spread our message, though. We had a few celebrities and large influencers organically share about the app, and it did wonders for growth (incredibly - we didn't pay for these endorsements, though, these people genuinely loved the product)But I can't just leave you with this answer! If you are building a product, I'm a huge fan of Founder Led Growth. I recommend talking about what you are building or the domain that you're building in at least 2-3X a week. The more I talk about what I'm building, the more people share it with others, and eventually, it led me to be featured in over 20 publications where other people could discover my message and product. This creates a flywheel for growth. If you are looking for a course on growth or growth marketing - Investing in Reforge was one of the best investments I've made (albeit it's not cheap) - but well worth learning about marketing flywheels and how to grow a business. In summary, build a great product, and don't be shy about talking about it!

Josefina·Jan 18

Hi Nathalie! I love that you've found ways to make traveling with a toddler work. What are your top tips and tricks for traveling with a toddler, especially when visiting multiple countries?

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi @Josefina - Great question. For me, it was all about mindset. I approach plane travel by treating my child like a literal prince. He gets juice, all of the fun food, and endless iPad ( these are things we don't do at home). It makes him look forward to the travel.Otherwise, I find it to be entirely about the mindset and finding childcare on the ground. When I spent a month in Paris, I enrolled my son in a local bilingual preschool - and it was the best of both worlds. He got exposed to a new environment and I found myself with free time in Paris! A win for everyone!

Lynn36·Jan 18

Hello Nathalie –Thanks for being so generous with your time! What advice would you give to aspiring speakers about landing their first speaking opportunity?

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi @lynn36 For anyone looking to break into public speaking, I highly recommend reading The Breakthrough Speaker by Smiley Poswolsky. He breaks down the formula for building your speaking career from scratch, and his book is the best investment I've made in growing my speaking presence. Additionally, I would reach out to your friends and colleagues to let them know you are interested in speaking. You'll likely get on panels, and once people start to see you, and you, in turn, write about the speaking opportunities on social media, the world will see you as a speaker - and the flywheel begins. Definitely read Smiley's book - it's the best playbook I've read to date.

tionnawilsonpierce·Jan 19

Welcome @NathalieWalton! It's a pleasure to digitally meet you. I would love to learn more about how you landed your first speaking opportunity? I am currently a certified Toastmaster and have been actively seeking for opportunities to connect with more younger women who may be interested in breaking into tech. Thank you for your time!

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

Hi @tionnawilsonpierce My first speaking opportunity came from people in my network. After I began posting regularly on LinkedIn (1-2X a week), my network noticed what I liked to talk about (empowering other females) - it was that visibility that reminded people of my message and that I'm passionate about spreading that message. It also doesn't hurt to put "speaker" in your LinkedIn bio too!For anyone looking to break into public speaking, I highly recommend reading The Breakthrough Speaker by Smiley Poswolsky. He breaks down the formula for building your speaking career from scratch, and his book is the best investment I've made in growing my speaking presence.Additionally, I would reach out to your friends and colleagues to let them know you are interested in speaking. You'll likely get on panels, and once people start to see you, and you, in turn, write about the speaking opportunities on social media, the world will see you as a speaker - and the flywheel begins. Definitely read Smiley's book - it's the best playbook I've read to date.

tionnawilsonpierce·Jan 20

@NathalieWalton Thank you for sharing! I truly appreciate your response. I'm excited to get Smiley's book and looking forward to securing new speaking opportunities this year soon. And congratulations on your most recent endeavors too!

abigailtovar·Jan 21

Hi Nathalie!! Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with the Elpha community. Congratulations on your successes! My question as a startup founder is how did you acquire your first beta users and what were the most valuable lessons you learned in regards to user retention?

madeyonist·Jan 16

Hi Nathalie, congratulations on all of your success. I actually used and loved expectful throughout my pregnancy almost 3 years ago and my husband always said I should go work for you all as I loved what you were doing and really wanted to build something for moms. Congratulations on building something meaningful in the world that really impacts the lives of others. I'm curious about how you were able to build a "cult-following brand" as you said above. I find it really easy to build things but hard to market it and make the right people aware that it exists. Do you have any tips, resources, advice in this area? Maybe a book you thought was helpful on the topic or advice that worked for you? Thank you so much!

NathalieWalton·Jan 19

@madeyonist This makes me so happy that you used Expectful!The good news is that the key to building a "cult-following brand" is to build a cult-following product. At Expectful, we built a niche product that our users loved and shared with their friends. There isn't a secret to how our following grew. People who used our product were just eager to share it with others.But I can't just leave you with this answer! If you are building a product, I'm a huge fan of Founder Led Growth. I recommend talking about what you are building or the domain that you're building in at least 2-3X a week. The more I talk about what I'm building, the more people share it with others, and eventually, it led me to be featured in over 20 publications where other people could discover my message and product. This creates a flywheel for growth. If you are looking for a course on growth or growth marketing - Investing in Reforge was one of the best investments I've made (albeit it's not cheap) - but well worth learning about marketing flywheels and how to grow a business. In summary, build a great product, and don't be shy about talking about it!

madeyonist·Jan 31

Thank you so much!

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