Countdown’s Founder Helpline 💬. An on demand way for founders of any…
By: Jai Malik
Tags: Startup, Venture Capital, Ethics, Founders, VC

Countdown Capital is a $5m pre-seed and seed stage fund investing in deep tech founders committed to machine ethics. If the Countdown platform excites you, please apply to be an LP here!

Earlier this week after I formally launched Countdown Capital, my team and I were lucky enough to receive messages from over fifty founders seeking funding, intros, nuggets of advice, or simply just someone to talk to. However, while our team initially tried to keep up with our Twitter DMs and pointed folks to our emails, it quickly became apparent to us that founders weren’t necessarily looking for an email reply. In reality, they wanted a conversation with quick responses and a sense of intimacy, especially when they were asking for time-sensitive advice. After we realized this on Tuesday morning, I decided to open up a public number and test out a new way of helping founders: advice by text!

Throughout the rest of the week, I received 31 text messages from founders. From the get-go, I found texting to be a much more efficient way of chatting with founders compare to a drawn out email conversation or a brief Twitter DM chat. The more texts I got, the more I became convinced that a general “founder help hotline” would be great for founders to have access to — so I tweeted out a request to partner up with other investors to build a more comprehensive texting initiative for founders.

It’s now Sunday, and over the course of this past week, we didn’t receive a message from another VC firm that wanted to partner up on this initiative. So, we took matters in our own hands: we have decided to launch the Countdown Capital Founder Helpline 💬 — an on demand way for founders of any stage or sector to speak to the Countdown team (in confidence) about anything they want help or advice on or simply want to chat about!

How It Works: Guidelines and Guardrails

In order to access the Helpline, all you have to do is text us at +1 (917) 947–9819 to get the conversation started!

That being said, we’ve put together some guardrails and guidelines for founders looking to use the Helpline that will facilitate a smooth experience for everyone.

No pitching will be permitted, unless you feel your company or idea qualifies as deep tech. If you feel it does, feel free to apply to pitch us here. Please keep all pitching to a minimum so we can focus on other value-add areas. Today, we can only support founders that are able to text a U.S. number. We are still exploring other options to serve international founders including creating a WhatsApp account, but we’ll keep everyone updated on Twitter. Please give us a maximum of 24 hours to reply to your text. Usually we respond within an hour of an SMS, but if we’re in a meeting or sleeping, we do need some extra time to respond. We’re always open to feedback! At any point of using the Helpline, please let us know if you have any feedback for our team to better serve founders through the Helpline.

If you have any questions about the Helpline, feel free to text me on the Helpline or DM me on Twitter @Jai__Malik! The Countdown team looks forward to hearing from you.