Scaling operations after a Pre-Seed round at heyLisa
Worked directly with the founder team to set up scalable processes, optimize work, boost performance and spend the investment in the best possible way.
Challenge
HeyLisa is a remote-first, AI Saas startup that builds the first conversational video editor in the world. They leverage the power of AI chatbots to make short video editing fast, easy and accessible to all content creators. After raising their first pre-seed funding round the founder team wanted to consolidate the team, build out an effective internal organization so that they could focus on product building, landing the first customers and raise their next round.
Objectives
- Get things done: overcome a stalemate situation where neither the product nor the business was developing fast enough, the team was not aligned on priorities.
- Optimize organizational structure: separate areas of responsibility, who is working on what
- Organize efficient remote work: meeting cadence, meeting templates, communication platforms
- Optimize legal setup of the company: employment contracts, taxation, captable
Solution
Boosterlab worked directly with the founder team both in person and online. We agreed on a 4-weeks intensive bootcamp program to build out the "operating system of heyLisa". We started with workshops to understand the current processes, who is responsible for what, where is most of the time and effort spent, identify inefficiencies and come up with better and scalable processes. First, we established an OKR system as goal setting and tracking system. We established an AOR (areas of responsibility) system to separate tasks, have backup people for all essential tasks and have a clear overview of who is working on what. The AOR system along with a new reporting system (weekly meetings, daily standups) resulted in a huge performance boost that enabled the team of 7 to progress faster. We suggested tools for better task management, company wiki, customer management and calendar management.
After the first 30 days, the team had the right framework to keep working at high efficiency, but we kept in touch for the next 6 months to oversee the operations and make sure everything is working well and performed various ad-hoc organizational tasks, helped with financial plans, reviewed their pitchdeck for the next fundraising round.
As a follow-up project we helped heyLisa incorporate a Delaware Inc and flip the company from the original EU company that they started. The Inc is a more attractive format to investors as it is the most common legal entity form behind startups and investors are aware of what laws govern them, standard contracts like SAFEs and ESOP employee incentive plans are easier to issue. We helped the team with understanding how the flip works, suggested a law firm to work with and ultimately cut tens of thousands of USD legal costs. Helped drafting new contracts and establish a healthy cap table that incentivizes all employees.
