21six Group 

Co-founder, CEO

21six Agency

Co-founder, Owner

Platform Media

Co-founder, Executive Director

Folding Pocket

Co-founder, Investor

Forward Press

Owner

Cricket Properties Ltd

Co-Owner

refiine

Jellyfish Solutions

Managing Director

Athletics Weekly Magazine

National Sales Director

Empowering Human-Centred Brands to Maximise Impact | Amplifying Your Mission through High-Quality Creative Communication

CEO of 21six Group with a passion for business, sport and building first class teams.

Rick Ankers

Get Prept

work with early-stage founders on their fundraising positioning, messaging, and negotiation strategies. 

match them with investors afterward.

Founding Partner

keep building

matching early-stage startups with senior Growth marketers via curated lists. 
get to work with folks from Miro, Typeform, Google Cloud, Slack etc. 

had a great ride → discovered a great niche → now building Get Prept in it.

Founder

Bunk

joined to help with product, markets, and growth. 
worked on customer loops, negotiations, new markets, and sales.

Product & Growth

Dakad. Education for adults 

Advisory Board Member

• picked a very narrow niche with the strong pain → hit PMF early → scaled quickly 
• sold and  stayed as an advisory board member

Founder & CEO

PayPro Global

- hey, can you help us build an operational process from scratch?
- you got it

Interim Operations in L&D 

Risotteria Restaurant

opened my second restaurant → made it work → sold as an ongoing business 
• better understanding the market = profitability in the first year
• built an insanely brilliant team, we are still in touch

Dreamers Place Restaurant

opened a restaurant → made all the classic mistakes a newbie would make → 
learned → closed it for the sake of opening Risotteria: Italian Restaurant

Panorama Hotel & Restaurant

joined as a receptionist and left as a CEO

some highlights:  

• hosted the UEFA Euro 2012 championship operation cycle. dark times
• hit three successful standardisations: Four Star Quality Сertification, ISO9001, and Green Key
• built a new reservations system (before Booking.com times), got a 45% increase in automation bookings, a 25% increase in revenue, and a 12% increase in net profit in the first year 

that's probably the closest I ever got to what's called a corporate career and I frankly suck at it

Chief Executive Officer

Chief Operating Officer

Marketing Manager

Reception & Booking

investment positioning for early stage | dm to say hi

I started as a receptionist at a hotel→ grew to a CEO. left the place to open my first local business in 2013: very niche, we got to product-market fit in less than a year. made enough money to open the first restaurant with it. 

made all the classical entrepreneurship mistakes. closed the first restaurant → opened the second one. this one worked out. sold as a running business. 

joined an early-stage startup to help with product and processes → got quite unhappy about how we hire in tech. 

started an agency on matching the early-stage with their first-ever marketing / growth role. 

found myself spending more time with founders working on their fundraising positioning than hiring strategies. and that's what I'm doing now at Get Prept.

Leta Lista

my only job is to talk to founders and investors. I’m being paid for having conversations, literally. 

founders want me to:
→ introduce them to the ‘right’ investors who invest in the idea stage.
 
investors want me to: 
→ introduce them to founders who validated the idea and have initial traction. 

do you see a clash here? 

so here’s who I actually work with and who’s getting it right: 

1. sell before you build.
go through your network → see whether your idea is worth a dime → listen to the pushback → fix the gaps. 
>>> if you can’t sell it, there’s no reason to build it. 

2. bootstrap before you raise. 
show you can do it, earn leverage, then raise on your terms. 
never raise to “figure things out, get the runway, do the market discovery”. >>> the only reason to raise is to speed up your growth. 

from 'how to make money, not lose money' manual (no, not really). 

when were we let to believe that people would invest in us just because we've got an idea? 
and how do we fix that?

Leta Lista 

investment positioning for early stage | 3x founder | dm to say hi

a quick coffee test. next time you buy a coffee, ask the barista which one you should take and watch them try:

- eeem, do you like it black or with milk?
- it's late in the day, so maybe a decaf?
- lactose-free option if needed, or maybe you just like almond milk, idk?

my record so far is one minute and 40 seconds of this guessing game before they break into “f**k it, how the hell am I supposed to know?”

yeah, right. they have to know your case, establish the background, and take all the moving parts into consideration. 

so why exactly do we expect it'll be different with building whatever we build?

tldr: all those fancy one-size-fits-all “comment GET and I’ll send it over” frameworks don’t work.

get picky about whom you take advice from.

when I quit my “bloody, it’s hard to believe, you must be kidding me” CEO job at age 23, everyone thought I was crazy.
most of my friends were just about to start with junior positions after graduating, but not me. 

I’ve started early: studied and worked shitty shift jobs at the same time. 
I’ve become a hotel maid, then moved to the reception, and was writing my thesis sitting at 4 am at the counter. freezing to the bones is my most vivid memory at the time. 

I watched my friends partying, hanging out, and trying to figure out who they want to be when they grow up. 
do you want me to say I wasn’t jealous? well, I can, but that would be a big lie. 

I made my way to a marketing department at age 20, and then became a CEO of a 4-star hotel at age 22. 
51 rooms, 70 people working in crazy shifts, 5 to 7 of them living at the facility from time to time to spare the hustle of getting there in time.
2 married couples working in the restaurant kitchen. 

I didn’t have to go - I did great: a few huge certifications done (including the fourth star at the facade), one UEFA-in-the-city disastrous week, and one whitepaper for brunching out and opening new facilities later, I was gone. 

I didn’t have to go, but I had no other choice either: I had to build smth. being an operator for someone else didn’t do it for me.

I had to take a risk, create smth that didn’t exist before, and find those people who needed it. I didn’t think twice, as it all seemed like one big adventure. 
God, I was naїve! sweet, sweet summer child.

and I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. what if I stayed? what if I were to open the second facility and the next one to start a chain? 
well, I guess we’ll never know (yes, that’s a frustrating answer). 

the chain was opened a bit later (good job me with that how-to whitepaper), and I built my first business at age 23: with the PMF in the first year and partnerships I could only dream about at year three. that’s a story for another day, though. 

that was more than a decade ago, and I only think about it today as I got back there for my Mum to meet my future husband for the first time ever at the rooftop restaurant of that very place. I guess we can call it a timeloop. 

and while sitting there, it suddenly hit me: I didn’t really have a choice. sooner or later, now or in a few weeks, you simply leave. because you absolutely have to.
the more founders I talk to, the more I understand: it’s not a choice, it’s how you are. you’re wired that way, go with it and dare to make it happen.

I just landed in sunny Barcelona this week, and it's fantastic timing as we signed our first customer from Japan.
I'm way too excited, but here's the story: NOTHING happened. 

he never commented on my posts 
he never sent a DM
we are not even connected on LinkedIn 

and yet it's an inbound that works: 

→ he read our content for a while (Matthew, my co-founder, posts about 8 times a year, so I'll humbly take the credit)
→ he visited our landing, and it became one of those 287 open tabs in his browser 
→ he paid attention when we updated it (went from the per-package pricing to a flat monthly retainer)

and simply scheduled the onboarding call. 

have you heard of the theory of 7 marketing touches before anyone buys your product? 
I guess that was the 7th. 

so we are now in a rabbit hole of his case, which is a super complex financial ecosystem. 
and it's a huge luck I'm here in Europe → makes it doable to work with Japan. 

here's what I wanted to say: go out there. take your space. make yourself visible. speak about what you do. 

yes, this is a hell lot of work, but that pays off.

no long intros, right to the point: 9 out of 10 founders get the competition wrong = miss $$$. here’s how to fix it and why you should care. 
it might change the way you think about your market, no pressure though.

please kindly stop: 

>> dropping all the big names. they own the market, they don’t compete with a tiny startup raising their pre-seed. 
>> showing your solution as the best one in the niche? there’s a chance there are competitors there who you haven’t discovered yet. 

yikes, I know. 

but hey, here are the things you can do instead: 
+ gives you clarity of the market you operate in 
+ signals “this founder knows their shit” to investors 
+ helps with product, marketing, and operational strategy

let’s crack on → 

market dynamics:
- total funding raised by competitors → shows market validation and gives you a hint at their marketing budget 
- competitor growth rates → market is growing, room for multiple winners
- M&A activity in space → validates exit potential, even if you’re early
- new entrants per year → market heat signal 

competitive gaps:
- underserved segments competitors ignore → grab them, build there, win a big chunk of market
- feature gaps in competitor products (verified by users) → be careful here: maybe no one built those features on purpose 
- customer complaints about current players / solutions  → reviews are the gold mine for a challenger brand 
- your unique approach / technology vs. their approach → what do they know that you don’t and vice versa

customer overlap analysis:
- % of your ICP also served by Competitor X → who are they, why is that, that’s the leverage to win them over 
- which competitors you encounter most in deals → why is that, and how they win
- which competitors you never see → different segments for now, but might overlap: you go for their segment or they go for yours
- co-existence potential → complement vs. substitute

hope that gives you a nudge to think about it and to look for hidden opportunities. 

I also have a slide that does a better comparison job between you and the competition - let me know if I should share that as well. 




hit that follow button to get more useful ideas, and I’d appreciate it if you share it with your network if it resonates.

I’m being paid for making harsh decisions. all I do goes down to two things: digging and prioritizing. 
and whilst digging is fun, when it gets to prioritizing, it gets painful: 

- founders are in love with their ideas
- they are deep in the weeds of execution 
- they can and will (!) explain what they do in a 1000 and 1 smallest detail 
- it feels like every one of those details is equally important and equally impactful 

and I guess you’ve guessed that it’s not. 
when I step in, I want to get out with one simple thing: what is it that you do in 7 words or less? 

and I’m being surprised over and over again by how hard it is to get the answer at that early stage. 
here’s why: 

+ founders are still learning: who’s the ICP, what they want, what’s the pain point, etc 
+ any prioritization attempt meets a severe FOMO: “if I say yes to ABC as my main customer, it means I have to say no to XYZ”, and that’s scary
+ all the existing playbooks are useless for your particular business case with hundreds of moving parts. ouch. 

so when it comes to making decisions about what to say, what to hold for now, and what’s the leverage, I run a distillation exercise: 

>>> here’s what we know about what you do → here’s what others care about what you do <<<

meaning: customers will want to hear one part of the story, investors another one, and business partners will care for a completely different thing (which one is that?)
meaning: don’t flood them with irrelevant details. 

go short → get to the point → make them want to hear more 
a bonus point: make them excited about you personally  

you keep that in mind → you’ll win them on board with you. 
and yes, it feels hard because it is hard. but where would we be without putting that effort?

9 months ago I started from zero. no customers, no plan, just an idea. and the idea wasn’t even mine. 
today, after working with 30+ early-stage founders, the only thing I can say is: 

we overestimate how much we can get done in a day and underestimate how much we can do in a year.

a year ago, I was working with the same people on a different problem: hiring their first marketing hire. who to target, are ex-Google guys able to build marketing from scratch, where to find candidates and how to win on board. all great if not for the one “but”: 

- we have to raise to be able to hire top talent
- ok, so what stands between you and the raise?

and just like that I ended up in long conversations about investors walking away from what looked like a done deal, about tricky questions and opportunities wasted. for hours and hours.
little did I know back then that it’s customer discovery interviews I’m running.

next thing I know, the conversation with my (future back then) co-founder happens:
→ founders have way too much on their plates  
→ raising is not only timeconsuming, but also something they’ve never done before - there’s a learning curve to climb 
→ investment positioning is much trickier than you think: they are not all marketers, after all

hours and hours of investors calls:
- what’s a ‘yes’
- what’s an instant ‘no’
- analyzing their recent investments
- looking for the patterns of ‘this will never work’

I spent weeks and weeks building and refining the framework we use now, doing the investment positioning work for free and talking to dozens of founders and investors on both sides of the table.

so here are three things that are most damaging for your chances to raise your pre-seed or seed:

1. you are not delusional where you have to be: 
+ it can’t be that bad as everyone says it is (even second-time founders have to believe it to survive the journey)
+ I’ll smash everyone with my product (you probably won’t, but you have to believe it to begin the journey)
+ I have a strong plan (watch out for all those 78 changes you’re about to introduce in the first month only)

all these compounds into what we call agency, aka “the results depend on me” feeling.

2. you don’t have a strong backing: co-founder, partner, friends, good night sleep, morning walks with your dog, you name it.
don’t walk this journey alone - chances are you can’t.

3. you take a ‘no’ personally.
every deal out there is sales. hiring is a sales deal, raising investment is a sales deal, getting customers is a sales deal.
inviting friends for dinner is sales too: they either “buy” your offer to join, or they don’t.

my point here: you don’t have to figure it all out alone. if you don’t like my stuff, find someone whom you like and click with and outsource things you’re not fantastic at.

use the time and energy (!) you saved to talk to your customer: there’s nothing out there that would give you more leverage than that at the early stage.

I want to see more winning founders.

sorry to be harsh here, but building an “all-in-one” at pre-seed is pretty much like saying “I’ve been on a French hunt today”. 

except for it wasn't French, it wasn't a hunt and it definitely wasn't today. all the rest is quite accurate.

I had to shut down my business because of one positioning mistake: category. except for back then, I didn't think about the category at all - I just didn't want to cook daily and opened a restaurant instead. 

so the idea was simple. keep it low-key, serve excellent coffee and maybe some pastry for a start - a solid first place to open. 

I found a huge and relatively inexpensive facility, great. lot’s of room means we can now have a kitchen as well, right? 

if you just yelled "wrooooong, don't do it, Leta, please don't!" - congratulations, you're a better marketer than I used to be in my mid-20s.  

when a good friend of mine went into a convo of "listen, you can't position it as both 'excellent coffee' and 'great food' place", I was like 'hah, you watch me!'

when I was shutting it all down to open an Italian risotteria that served one thing only (yes, risotto), my friend was there to say "I told you". that's not the dramatic part of the story, though - we are still friends. 

the dramatic part of the story is this: it might look weird and nerdish to the founders I work with today, but we always, always, always start with the category. the simplest question goes like: what is it that you want to be known for? 

build whatever you want, but if you and your customers call it different names, we've got work to do. 

a few years later, I sold that second restaurant as an ongoing business with a huge customer database and a happy team. because when your message is clear and risotto is tasty, it all starts to build up.

there’re two ways to get warm intros that will open the door for you: you either rely on your broad network, or you do proper research and take a 10/10 shot.
I always recommend the latter, here’s why: 

way 1: Existing network >>> investors / partners / ICP:

the conversation would go like: 
“hey Jane, I’m raising $3M seed for my b2b marketplace / looking for a strong supplier / looking to onboard XYZ, do you have anyone in mind who would be interested?”

pros: 
+ sometimes people will have a good match in mind and be glad to make an intro 
+ it’s broad, but effective if you have time 
+ makes it easier for others to help you if you offer a precise description of who you’re looking for

cons: 
- spray & pray in fundraising means a 100 convos: 1 term sheet ratio
- get ready to hear ‘no’ all the time, it’s a part of the process

way 2: define precisely who you’d like to talk to >>> work backwards to see who in your network knows them

the approach would be like: 
“hey Peter, I’m raising $3M seed for my b2b marketplace / looking for a strong supplier / looking to onboard XYZ, and I think Helen F. would be a strong match. Is there a chance you might introduce me, and if so, what should I share upfront for you to feel comfortable moving forward?”

pros: 
+ you know specifically who you want to talk to, why, and why they would be interested 
+ saves time and effort, you’re not spread thin 
+ you bring clarity → higher chances to close the deal

cons: 
- you have to invest more time into building a more robust pipeline 
- rarely works if the network is not broad 

who to approach: 
→ your current investors - the primary best option. they’ve already invested in you, it’s a natural next step to get you warm intros
→ your customers - current or past. they know you, your working ethic, and what you’re capable of. some of them might turn into investors / partners as well 
→ fellow funders / ex-collegues. less invested in your idea, but still a good network leverage

a pro tip: offer them a brief intro email to share = simplify a task for them:

what you do, why you / why now, why they should care (aka how you’ll make them money). 
the only goal here is to get direct contact → get a meeting, so don’t put too much on it.  


ok, that’s it for today. save to have it for the future and see you around for more useful stuff. 


p.s. and it doesn’t mean the cold outreach doesn't work!

if investors don't lower their standards soon, they'll die knowing they only invested in the strong founding teams that bootstrapped till they got a clear understanding of their market, strong initial traction, and the GTM execution so good that they don't actually need investors' money. 

oh, wait...

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