64. Lucy Hall, LOANHOOD - Failed your investment round? Go again

Lucy Hall is the co-founder and CEO of LOANHOOD, a gender inclusive fashion rental marketplace for the next generation. Before Lucy founded LOANHOOD in late 2019, she had a long career as model agent and had entrepreneurial experience before, with her farm to fork restaurant in Covent Garden, which is where sustainability became front of mind. 

Lucy started raising for LOANHOOD by building a rewards-based Crowdfunder and receiving a grant from NatWest. This helped establish the brand’s community and opened their eyes to the crowdfunding ecosystem. After some questionable advice, they tried to raise £400,000 from VCs who, from the get-go, said, "No, you're not ready for this. You haven't got any traction”. The founders also wanted to crowdfund via Seedrs as the business has a major community aspect, so it made sense to go this route. They got commitment and went live in a way that felt poorly timed before several investors pulled out, and they decided to close the round when it didn’t exactly work out. Lucy believes you must be honest with yourself in this situation – there’s no shame in backing away and refocusing when the time is right. 

Thankfully, talking to other founders was invaluable and helped Lucy, and the team figure out the next steps - contacting Angel investors. After many LinkedIn messages, their lead investor reached out to them, which was a game changer, and the domino effect began.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why rewards-based crowdfunding won’t work for everyone
• How important advice from the right people is
• Why there’s no shame in failing a funding round and starting over