Making Monet: raising $500k and making 500k matches
I took a gap year after my freshman year of college because of COVID. At 18 years old, I co-founded Monet alongside friends from high school: Daniel, Jonathan, and Marc.
Monet was a dating and friendmaking app where users sent drawings to start the conversation. What initially started as a side project turned into a venture-backed startup (a world I was quite unprepared to navigate). I wore many hats— I led fundraising, social media, marketing, growth, community, content, and more. Here are a few examples of that work:
PRODUCT DESIGN
Daniel and I spent the summer of 2020 prototyping and user testing the early bones of a “drawing dating app”.
Once the prototype was ready, we set out to recruit users.
CONTENT CREATION
In October 2020, I made a TikTok asking people to try out Monet. It spiked to 500,000 views in a day. Everything changed from there on out— within three weeks, 10,000 people joined the beta version of Monet on TestFlight, and 1,000 people joined the Monet Discord.
FUNDRAISING
As views climbed, investors reached out. I pitched Monet to tons of VCs, all while in my pajama pants, and we published our app on the App Store. In December, we closed a $500k pre-seed round from Pear VC, Rarebreed Ventures, Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad founder), and other angel investors.
Take a look at the pitch deck:
MonetPitchDeck.pdf
COPYWRITING, BRANDING, MARKETING...
I wrote all of Monet’s copy, in and outside of the app. We dreamed up personalized profiles, made merchandise, and reached users around the world.
We had so many amazing opportunities. For Valentine’s Day, we launched The Perfect Heart Contest: draw the perfect heart to win $1,000. We worked with the TikTok team to launch their Login With TikTok feature and pitched a Monet integration to their Anchors team. I created and managed a college ambassador program, partnered with a tattoo artist to raise money, and so much more...
We shut down Monet at the end of 2022. We sent all users a notification and asked people to leave a message if they found love— as far as I know, Monet has created (at least) 2 engagements. It worked!