Vicky Boudreau is the co-founder and CEO of Heylist, a platform that connects brands with influencers. The Montreal-based company, co-founded by CTO Alexandre Borgia and CXO Nico LeBlanc, specializes in “nano-influencers” with less than 10,000 followers.
Heylist raised a $1.6M pre-seed round led by Accelia Capital and followed by The51 and Anges Québec, as well as angel investors and the Government of Quebec through its Impulsion PME program.
This is Vicky’s second company; she co-founded the PR and marketing firm Bicom 18 years ago alongside her partner Marie-Noelle Hamelin. Although she is an experienced entrepreneur, this was her first technology startup and her first experience raising money in venture capital. She shared some lessons she learned along the way with Carta.
Highlights
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An unexpected term sheet at the grocery store
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Securing warm intros
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Designing the ultimate slide deck
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Navigating government grants and subsidies
CARTA: When did your fundraising process begin?
VICKY BOUDREAU: At the beginning, the idea for Heylist came through a pilot project within my first company, Bicom, a PR and marketing firm that my partner and I have been running for almost two decades. The potential of the concept was so big that we decided to scale it. To do that, it needed to be tech-enabled, and we realized it should be a totally separate company.
We bootstrapped from the first company to the second one, but once we were aiming to be a global company, we knew we needed support and a structure that enabled us to share equity with new co-founders, so we could bring in the best partners, Alex and Nico. So we started the new company.
I'm a very nerdy student, so whenever I have interest in something, I need to go deep and read and learn. Early on, someone advised me to read Venture Deals. It's kind of the bible for founders who are thinking about raising.
I made myself wake up really early in the morning, prior to the kids, to study the book, just to understand how these deals work.
And then, in order to understand the VC world, I started booking meetings with VC people that I knew from my network or that I've met in the past, just to ask them candidly my questions and learn about how they're looking at businesses. So as I was starting mine, I’d be building it in a way that I wouldn't have to switch a lot of things when I was ready to raise.
And funny enough, there’s that saying, “When you ask for money, you get advice, and when you ask for advice, you get money.” We got a term sheet and we were not actively raising at the time.
I was actually at the grocery store when I got it in my inbox, and I almost fainted. I had to go find a bathroom to splash some water in my face. I couldn't speak. My husband was like, “What email did you get? What happened?” It was a really special moment.
After that we entered a negotiation period, because it's one thing to have a term sheet, and even though you’re really excited, you still want to take a step back and make sure that the terms are founder-friendly, and that you trust this new partner. And we were very, very lucky to have Accelia. They trust us as founders and share our vision about growing into a global tech company.
When you say founder-friendly, what does that look like? What was your mindset going into your negotiation?
I'm very fortunate because I'm in my forties, I have a beautiful network of friends in different fields. I had my go-to, not totally non-biased advisors that could help me at that time. And everybody had a different opinion. This is too low, this is too big, this is too this, this is too that. I was getting so many mixed messages, but I think that getting all those opinions helped me trust myself in the end.
The fact that they were all so smart and all saying so many different things helped me realize there was no objective right answer. I could trust myself. And of course both my co-founders and my lawyers were very precious to me.
And then I also turned back to the Venture Deals book. It was great when I was having those conversations with my lawyers. Because I had read the book, I understood about convertible notes. I felt I was more in control having these conversations.
But honestly, sometimes I would have sheets on my wall, behind my computer screen, with some keywords and key messages, especially when the negotiations were getting harder. It was almost like training for a sport, honestly—you need to be in good shape physically and mentally to to close your round. Otherwise you can get tired and say yes to stuff that you shouldn't be saying yes to.
For example, I was at South by Southwest when the final legal paperwork came through to review. It’d been a long day at the conference, and at night there were all those parties. But I had important documents to review, so I was like, okay, I don't want to screw that up. So I went to my hotel room and started reading…and then started reading really fast. And whenever I saw words like "IPO," I was like, yeah, this could be real. So I went back and took my time to read every single word.
For me, the legal part was probably the most demanding part of it. Making sure I understood everything and that I was taking the right decision not just for myself and my partners but for the future of our company.
So you had your first term sheet pretty unexpectedly. What was it like filling out the rest of the round?
That ended up coming together both with further VC investment, and funding from a program with the Quebec government, which we had to win. It was a bit of a longer process than I thought it would be. Sometimes I think I am saved by my optimism. If I knew how hard something might be, I might stop before I even begin. But I usually just jump in, and then keep going and figure it out.
I think that’s a helpful trait for an entrepreneur. Don’t overthink it. Just try for an opportunity that could help build your business.
One thing I found super interesting is that I've met with many VCs where Heylist wasn’t a fit for them, but they were kind enough to give me warm intros. People are very supportive when they think you have a good idea and it's worth their time and it's worth their contacts' time. They would send these emails and those people, they pick up the phone and they take those meetings. So I was very fortunate. I had very, very valuable meetings, even those that didn’t invest.
It can get very time-consuming taking those VC meetings, but one thing I would recommend for founders is to write down every single question that you've been asked, and make sure that in your next pitch you are answering these prior to being asked. That’s one thing I learned during the round.
Another thing I learned was about mindset. I was surprised: When I was first approaching angels, I would have never asked great business people that I know from over the years, because I didn't want to bother them. But then some of them told me, “If you're not letting me in and you succeed as I think you're going to succeed, I'll be very unhappy.”
So that really changed my mindset, that I'm not asking people for money, I'm giving them an opportunity to be participating in this journey. It's not about bragging or being too confident, but from then on, I was seeing things differently.
You mentioned refining the pitch based on questions you received. Tell us more about how you developed your pitch deck and how it changed over time.
We were very lucky. One of our co-founders, Nico, comes from the advertising world and is our UX lead. So he really thought it through and developed our storytelling and how our slides looked. Which boiled down to communicating what we needed to in as few words as possible.
The Internet is a great resource for your pitch deck. You can see what the Uber first deck was like, the Airbnb first deck. It helps you to see how the seed of an idea turned into a billion-dollar company. It was interesting to see what these companies did, what they had in common, but also what differed. Because if you go online, you’ll also see, “These are the 10 slides you need. And in that order.” And another place will say, “No, these are the 10 slides you need, in another order.”
At some point you need to start somewhere, and it's not going to be perfect. But that’s where the iteration comes in. Something that I would recommend when presenting is that at the end, don't be shy to ask for feedback on your deck. Investors see tons of decks every single day. And of course, again, you will get conflicting feedback, and you’ll have to figure out what resonates with you, and what feedback you want to listen to.
And another tip that I got, which I used, is to have two versions of the deck. One would be a teaser that you can share with people to make them want them to learn more. Your full deck is not in everyone's inbox. And then if there's interest, then you can share your full deck.
What has your experience been like building a startup in Quebec?
Generally, in Quebec and Canada, once you’re up and running, there’s a chance to apply for a number of grants and subsidies. And some specifically for female-founded companies. So I’ve been able to benefit from that. And in Quebec, we have support also from programming from the government. We have been selected to apply for a program in Palo Alto next March, invited by the government of Canada, for an AI program. They really support the startups here.
But on the other hand, investors are really more risk-averse in Canada. They're doing venture capital risk but with a lot of precaution. I did not suffer from that because I already had a proven record of my first business. I was generating sales already. So I was kind of a safe bet. Maybe that's why I managed to raise in 2023 when it was a tough market.
Another thing that’s been great about building the company in Quebec has been our access to talent. There’s great talent in Canada. And something that I love is that 75% of my team is female, even the tech team. So for me, having that culture and spirit of equity, even if we're in tech... we're trying to do things our own way at Heylist, and it seems to be working in terms of attracting talent.
Now that you’ve raised this capital, what’s up next? What are your goals after this pre-seed round?
We've been building the team; we're a team of 13 now. And we want to remain nimble for now. We’re focusing on developing the most useful product for both the creators and the clients. One thing that differentiates is that we're not a scraper. We're a community. People connect their socials with us, so we have access to their results and data of the campaign in real time. We're not just a directory like other platforms. So growing the community, growing the number of users, these are priorities.
We just confirmed today our first big U.S. client. They are in the beauty space, a beautiful brand, sold at Sephora. Growing our database of nano-influencers in the U.S. is also a big focus right now. We’re excited to be partnering with great brands, and we know the influencers will be excited to receive the product.
Is there anything else you want to add that founders should know about raising money?
One last piece of advice is even if you're not raising, be educating yourself and building your network, because it can take much longer than you think. What I heard most from investors is that they don't want to be contacted the moment you need money. It's like everything—it's relationship-building. In my case, luckily, my curiosity saved me from that. Otherwise I would've not probably taken on these meetings as early. But it's something that even if now you think you're going to bootstrap or you have other options, keep your options open and start to build relationships.
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