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In Today’s Open Letter

Sometime in 2024, Tim Treagus sat down to draft an article titled "Why We're Shutting Down Yazi…" Two years later, they’re in 15 countries, with clients like Old Mutual, Discovery, Pick n Pay and Capitec, and investors gave them R30 million to grow more – here’s what happened in-between…

The runway was thinning. A fourth funding deal had just slipped. And Meta had killed his Yazi WhatsApp number. Not once or twice, but three separate times.

You already know how the story ends: Yazi raised a R30m pre-money round led by 3 Capital Ventures, went live in 15 countries, with corporate clients and a 1.8 million-person panel, 80% of leads now coming through AI search. We covered that in March.

What we didn't cover was the four years before and the lessons Tim took out of them.

1. If you don't build in your area of expertise, expect to pay tuition

Tim started Yazi in 2022 with a finance degree, two years of work behind him building Billo (a small e-commerce brand he'd run since university), and almost nothing else: No domain expertise in research, no network in the industry, no technical background.

"I was paying to learn," he says. Every year in business was an investment in getting to know the buyer, the sales cycle and the language of fundraising. And his co-founder and CTO, Mzwandile Sotsaka, only came on board 18 months in.

Tim’s lesson: Your first years in a new space are about learning. Don’t fight it, budget for it, so you can pursue understanding of that space relentlessly. Oh, and whatever you do, get a technical co-founder in earlier than Tim did.

2. You don’t need to pitch more; you need to be sure what you’re pitching is really ready

Tim started raising in May 2022. What followed was nearly four years of pitch decks, near-misses and deals that fell through at the last minute (on four separate occasions).

The temptation when raising is grinding and assuming the answer is more. More meetings, more intros, more decks out. Now Tim knows better.

The early pitches weren't failing because the deck count was too low. They were failing because the ingredients weren't there yet: the metrics, the panel scale, the story. If you're raising and not getting funding, it’s not about "who else can I pitch?" It's "am I actually ready?"

3. Send the update

This is the unglamorous one. And the one that actually closed the round.

Since 2022, Tim has sent a fortnightly investor newsletter to over 110 people. The numbers, the thinking, the pivots, the bad months. Every two weeks. No exceptions.

It kept him accountable. But more importantly, when 3CV eventually came looking, those 110 people had been watching Yazi happen, one fortnightly email at a time. Every time Tim met a potential investor or industry contact, they went straight onto the list. So by the time a real opportunity came, the relationship was already warm.

The round wasn't won on the pitch; it was won in the previous 90-odd updates.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the shutdown article never went out.

We're watching this space…

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Your 2 cents…

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