Fundraising Tips – Weekly for Founders

Blue Jay’s Sherry Jiang: Fundraising, Pivots & Building Peek

Written by Jason Kirby | Apr 11, 2024 12:00:00 PM

The Originator of the Opportunity Fund Concept Helping Imagine Raising $3,000,000 and Then Pivoting to a Completely Different Business. That's What Sherry Jiang Shares on This Episode

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking for Non-Dilutive Capital?

The cost of equity capital is getting expensive; debt or working capital might be a better option if you're already generating revenue, and it's non-dilutive.

We've made it easier than ever to get matched with private capital providers and receive offers in minutes, not weeks or months.

*We don't charge any fees to source you debt*

Explore Your Debt Options

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sherry Jiang Shares Her Secrets to Managing Her Burn and Repitching Existing Investors After a Major Pivot

                                   


 

In this episode, I talked with Sherry Jiang, co-founder and CEO of Peek.Money, formally known as Blue Jay Finance, where she shares her journey from leaving Google to starting her own company. Blue Jay Finance aims to solve the problem of managing personal finances by providing an intelligent net worth tracker and personalized insights.

Sherry explains her decision to take a bold bet on Asia and build her company in Singapore. She first jumped into fintech focusing on stablecoins, even with the ups and downs of the crypto market. When COVID hit, raising money got tough. But Sherry got creative and focused on small checks to get intros to bigger checks. Sherry didn't just look for money; she also worked on making real connections beyond the context of fundraising.

Amidst pivots in the company's direction and changes in co-founder dynamics, she stayed focused on being careful with money and keeping things simple. She made sure they didn't spend too much and always looked for ways to make revenue. She offers tips for founders dealing with pivots, focusing on key metrics, communicating effectively, and having a nuanced perspective on the process.

Here's what you're in for:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 03:45 Leaving Google and starting Peek.Money
  • 09:47 The conception of Peek.Money
  • 22:10 Raising funds for the stablecoin idea
  • 27:01 Raising capital and networking
  • 29:05 Pivoting and communicating with investors
  • 34:23 Co-founder dynamics and transition
  • 39:39 Managing burn and cashflow
  • 44:24 Advice for founders dealing with pivots 

ABOUT SHERRY JIANG

Sherry Jiang, Co-founder and CEO of Bluejay Finance, mixes a strong entrepreneurial drive with smart strategy in the blockchain world. Before starting Bluejay Finance, Sherry sharpened her skills at Google. There, she learned a lot about creating products and understanding markets. Using what she knows, Sherry set out to make private market investments open to more people through Bluejay Finance. At Bluejay Finance, she leads a team working to change how people invest in private markets. She has since pivoted to focus on helping investors track real-world assets. Sherry's way of leading focuses on being the best, always learning, and pushing the industry forward.

Watch it Now

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Free Fundraising Resources

🤓 - Free pitch deck reviews - Submit your deck

💸 - Access working capital fast - Explore options for free

😍 - Free list of AI Recommended VCs - Apply for free

👨‍💻 - Free fundraising coaching session - Schedule 15 minutes with us

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Premium Resources

🗓️ - Book a one-hour private capital strategy call - Book Now

💫 - Pitch deck design services for founders by VCs - Decko

💼 - Startup Legal Services - Bowery Legal

📚 - Startup Friendly Accounting Services - Chelsea Capital

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Upgrade to Thunder Premium to Unlock:

  • Access to VC firms' team tabs to see active partners of the fund & their LinkedIn
  • Navigate a VC's portfolio to see relevant portcos or competitors, quickly find their founders on LinkedIn to connect with them, and request warm intros 
    A downloadable CSV with the investor emails & LinkedIn URLs
  • Ability to filter your matches and adjust your profile
  • LiteCRM to track your progress
  • Request intros to VCs directly through the platform
  • Get our fundraising guide on how to increase your odds of getting a meeting
  • Upgrade to lifetime access (one-time fee of $497) and get a free coaching session

Upgrade Now

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's Connect:

  • Hosted by Jason Kirby - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrkirby/
  • Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for market and industry news and tips when it comes to raising capital and growing your business - https://join.thunder.vc
  • Seeking to raise capital? Get your list of target VCs by creating a free profile here - https://web.thunder.vc
  • Looking to raise debt? Explore tailored debt options for free by completing a profile at https://debt.thunder.vc
  • Thank you for being a loyal subscriber to Fundraising Demystified. We appreciate your support, and we're excited to continue bringing you more inspiring stories from successful founders.

Blue Jay’s Sherry Jiang: Fundraising, Pivots & Building PeEk

Publish date: April 11 2024

Page URL: https://blog.thunder.vc/sherry-jiang

Video URL: https://youtu.be/CX0Q9i8QOec

Full Transcript 

Jason Kirby: Hey everyone, welcome back. This is Jason Kirby of Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Sherry Jiang with us today, the co-founder and CEO of Bluejay Finance. Welcome to the show, Sherry.

Sherry Jiang: Thanks, Jason. Glad to be here.

Jason Kirby: Now we're excited to have you here. You have a pretty interesting story as we were talking offline before coming in. There's a lot of really interesting pieces that I think a lot of founders that kind of that seed, pre-series A stage might take from today's show. So before we dive into all the specifics, how about you just give the audience a little bit about you, your background and what you're building at Blue Jay.

Sherry Jiang: Absolutely. So as mentioned, I'm Sherry. I'm one of the co-founders of Bluejay. We're incubating a series of products solving personal finance management. I actually live in Singapore, even though I was born and raised in the US. But back when I was at Google, I took a bit of a bet that the next billion users coming online are going to come from markets like India, Indonesia, and just move myself to Singapore to work for the team here.

Sherry Jiang: It was a pretty interesting journey. I was super glad to be part of a product that actually grew from a new product to over 100 million users in India in just three years. So in a way, it was a bit of a startup experience, I'd say, within Google, but of course, with a lot less risk than I would say of actually doing a startup, which I think I decided after that experience, I mean, I just have to follow it up with probably the biggest career risk I took, which is basically leaving Google, the comfort of Google, and starting my own company.

Sherry Jiang: Now, in terms of what we are doing today with Blue Jay, one of the challenges that I noticed among my peers, and actually with myself as well, is that our financial lives are becoming a lot more complicated. I'm an expat. I have 18 accounts in the US and Singapore, brokerage accounts, bank accounts, et cetera. And people have different types of asset classes that they're investing in as well, like alternatives, et cetera. Yet we haven't really had a huge re-haul of the way we're managing that money. We're still using Excel. I was sporadically updating it, sometimes incorrectly, sometimes with different timestamps. And it's difficult to get a singular view...

 

 

Jason Kirby: So there's a couple of points I want to unpack here. So we see kind of the full timeline of leaving Google, conceptualizing an idea, having your why to, you know, getting to where you are today. But there's a couple of things that we kind of glossed over that I want to dive deeper into. You raised $3 million on the stable coin idea. How? How did you raise the money? How did you, you know, it was definitely a tough time to raise money for anything crypto or.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah.

Jason Kirby: blockchain or stablecoin related. So how did you, what kind of process did you run? What, how did you find these investors and you raised 3 million. Like that's a sizable chunk of change for the stage that you were at. So how did you pull that off?

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. Jason, I do feel like a lot of it was brute force, if I were to be very honest. But I was learning about the fundraising process while fundraising as well, right? So just a little bit of context. This was still kind of in the middle of COVID, which meant going to meetups or meeting investors casually for coffee or traveling to conferences was just not really in the equation. So you had to get a bit creative. I mean, maybe I basically looked at any

Sherry Jiang: and always to meet people that could connect me to investors. I'll give you some examples. I had a friend that knew someone who was an angel investor in crypto and mentioned casually that they were going to the beach over the weekend. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna tag along and meet him at the beach. This was on a weekend. And he ended up investing in our company and introducing me to four investors, but it was like.

Jason Kirby: So can I pause you real quick? So you knew he was an angel investor going to the beach, but he didn't know you were a founder looking for money.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. No, he had no, he didn't know who the hell I was. I mean, I just basically was like, you know what, like, let me, let me just try to open up a conversation. I'm sure it'll come up. And if he's interested, like, you'll indicate it. Right. And so that's, that's really how it was. I mean, I kind of knew

Jason Kirby: So that's the secret. That's what I want to poke out a little bit more because you didn't go like, hi, I'm Sherry, I have a startup and I'm doing that. I imagine you, yeah, you met him in a safe, unrelated space that was more about building relationships, having fun. You have some credibility, you work to Google, like anyone who works at Google, you get a little checkbox of like, okay, you're safe and legit. And so there's a credibility there, but then you focus more like if the topic comes up.

Sherry Jiang: Correct. Yeah.

Jason Kirby: I will, you know, then we'll like engage, but you're not going to like force it on, on the person to like, do you want to invest? So I think this is something that's really crucial. I want to hit on for our audience is, you know, being able to really think about the relationship and allowing things to come up naturally as opposed to, you know, going straight into like a 62nd elevator pitch on, you know, why you're raising money, especially out of the context of raising money.

Jason Kirby: Now if someone wants to ask you and be inquisitive, like, oh, you seem interesting. Oh, what do you do? Like, and then that kind of stuff happens, great. I just like, you've made it seem like it was so natural, but one, you're strategic in how you did it, so kudos to you. But two, it's something that I think a lot of founders don't realize how important that is to kind of come off more naturally and as if you're building a relationship and trying to meet people outside of the context of the fundraise.

Jason Kirby: to build a more organic relationship where the defenses are down and they're more likely to be focused on meeting someone new, not necessarily like, should I invest in you? So I just wanted to call that out because I wanted to compliment you on that.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. I absolutely agree with that, by the way. And a little side suggestion for anybody is find natural ways of meeting people where you feel comfortable and it's also not just a founder investor context. So one thing that I do regularly is actually I play poker in the scene in Singapore. It's something I really enjoy.

Sherry Jiang: And I mean, inadvertently, I have met investors through it. And most of the time, I wasn't pitching at all. I closed my round, right? But several of them actually have reached out, like, oh, I saw that you are doing this company. Just want to grab a casual coffee and get to know you. And it's been a good conversation. I tell them I'm obviously not raising you at that point, but it's a way for you to get to know people. And obviously, you know,

Sherry Jiang: Don't be like a degenerate gambler when you're playing poker meeting investors. I mean that might lead to some not so positive conclusions They have about you and your decision-making, but if it's something you enjoy like go for it Golf is another thing, but you know there's other ways to meet people than the most obvious right like go for something that You know you feel very comfortable in your own skin doing that you know leads to introductions that could help be helpful later on

Jason Kirby: Preferably things that cost a little bit more money. For some reason I noticed that it's like, you want the more expensive the hobby, the more natural it is for you to run into someone that has money and is willing to invest. But we won't go down that path. But all right, so you got some angels. You get a little bit of money in the door. But you're still raising three million. How did you get the rest of the capital and what was your process?

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. I mean, it really was just this network effect, right? It was like, so my the biggest check that came in was nearly $1 million. That came from, yeah, just linking the introduction. It came from a founder in crypto who was an entrepreneur for my incubator. So he was in a previous cohort. I met him because he was like, hey, I want to help you out. He introduced me to his angel investor.

Sherry Jiang: who then, both of them actually ended up investing in my round. And then the second investor he introduced me to, that angel from Amsterdam, he was like, hey, you should meet this investor. And then that's actually how we got our first large check in the round, which actually drove the momentum of the round that came in, I would say week three. So week one to two was a lot of these smaller angel checks, right? So one thing I actually do tell people sometimes is like, you might feel like, oh, like,

Sherry Jiang: 10,000, 15,000 angel checks is not very scalable. It's a lot to go through those conversations. I just want to go for the one million check. I would say start with those. You'd never know what happens. Those guys can become your biggest advocates because they are investing normally because of some personal connection that they have with you as a founder, which is a lot easier than, let's say, an institutional investor. And they can be your advocate.

Sherry Jiang: with funds that invested in their company. So these guys, again, were also founders, right? So that's one thing that I kind of learned about the process, but it did take a lot of these small meetings, and I remember, I didn't have more than 100K committed initially, because it was all these smaller checks.

Jason Kirby: And so you get these angel checks, they start opening up new doors, you start getting bigger checks and things start to come together. You close your round, I think you mentioned it took about five months or so, kind of rolling clothes, but then you pivot. How do you communicate that, hey guys, thanks for the money for doing X, but now I'm doing Y. How did that conversation go?

Sherry Jiang: It's difficult, I mean, I would say. But I think what's important is to focus on providing a good reason for the pivot, almost as strong as your initial pitch to them, right? Like think about all the questions that they would have. How big is the addressable market? What's their commercialization model? What are the insights? All of that. And basically, you have to prove that what

Sherry Jiang: the direction that you're going is better than the direction that you were previously on. And if you want to generate shareholder return for yourself as a founder, this is the best way to go, which will also generate returns for them. So I think it's important to paint this story, right? I think the idea of pivoting comes with a lot of shame, I would say, in the startup community. It feels like it's a failure of some sort. Like, you know, you were on a track and you change your mind. Like, do you not?

Sherry Jiang: have conviction as a founder if you're changing your mind. But linking back to that golden circle concept, I think you still need to state your intention of why you're doing this and why the what's around it, the product, may need to change depending on market reality. Market reality was that stable coins were extremely hard to bootstrap liquidity for. It was just very difficult. And so I highlighted the learnings that we had and then presented basically what's

Sherry Jiang: the next direction to come and almost like repitch it to the investors, right? Now, I would say that it's entirely possible that your investors are going to understand the pivots and what you're doing less and less because they invested with a probably better understanding with the initial company that you had than it is with what you're doing this point on forward, right?

Sherry Jiang: I think what's really critical is to communicate, right? And not shy away from that conversation, right? You talk about why you're doing it, repitch it. You also communicate, like, what exactly do you need to see to show whether or not this is working or not, right, over what time period? And just be really honest in following back up. And at the end of the day, I tell the investors, right, like, I didn't quit Google to do something that I don't think is gonna be a wild success, right? I'm also a big shareholder here.

Sherry Jiang: The best chances of all of us succeeding, in my view, is to go down this path, which I have high conviction for. And let's check in at certain points in time and discuss where the metrics are lining up.

Jason Kirby: I think that's an incredibly professional way to handle the relationship. And I imagine, was this a in-person conversation? Was this like a, you know, zoom meeting or was it like an email? How did you hand and did you do every single investor? Just kind of the bigger one.

Sherry Jiang: Just the bigger ones, I mean, we had 30 investors, so I mean, it's kind of a lot to go to every single one of them, so it's mainly just starting with the big ones, right, I mean, they're the most invested in your company, therefore they have almost a, like, I guess, bigger priority order in figuring out what's going on. So for them, I mean, we did a Zoom call. My investors are not in Singapore, so I mean, in person is a little bit logistically difficult, I would say. Every time there's a big update, if I had to fly, I would...

Sherry Jiang: probably not spend as much time building my product, right, which is a problem. And then other folks, it's an email update with an open communication channel, if they so wish to schedule a call and chat, right, which I'm always open to. So that's how I've handled it. Now, I think everyone has a different way of doing it, but I would say that in the case of having a lot of investors, I think it's okay to pick and choose and just...

Sherry Jiang: have a few that you wanna start out with because at the end of the day, like you should be, like I should be on 30 customer calls and not 30 investor calls for my business.

Jason Kirby: That's great way to look at it. And I think you, you present a case. That's basically what you approach. You're like, you had a hypothesis, you ran the test, you look back at it. Didn't, didn't turn out to be an accurate, uh, assumption. And so you define a new hypothesis and move forward. And as long as you kind of follow that scientific method, it's kind of hard to argue against unless you're making things up, but it doesn't sound like that.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah, exactly. Be scientific about it, right? I mean, like, if you lead with just gut and feeling, then you're going to get opinions in response, right? Like, and that's not very productive, I think, for a lot of people. Instead, you lead with data and then present what conditions need to be true or not true to continue. And then they're like, okay, your thinking sounds right. Let's just see how it goes, right? That's so that's how I would approach it.

Jason Kirby: So you pivot from the original stablecoin, then you go to kind of like the private credit, all it's on the blockchain concept. And somewhere along the way you mentioned your first co-founder, and I thought that was a unique language to use. So I guess walk me through what that meant, what happened to your first co-founder and how did you replace them and bring in a new co-founder.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So around August of 2023, we basically hit a two year, like mark with our startup and a common narrative or at least story I was hearing not just with our company, but with other companies is that when people hit that mark, they start to think, how would running this company for the next 10 years look right? Maybe in the beginning, you're like,

Sherry Jiang: let's just see how this goes for two years, right? And when you hit two years, then you reevaluate if your own values, what you care about, what you wanna do and get out of it can change, right? And especially now you're looking at it from this long-term perspective, like what would going down this road look like? And I think my CTO had a realization that this was not what he wanted to continue with from multiple perspectives, right? And this was a...

Sherry Jiang: pretty amicable conversation, I would say. And we're very lucky that we actually had a startup coach work with our team during the whole process. Like, you know, I had someone to basically third party independent person, you know, bounce ideas around about the situation. And they also had that resource as well. So I definitely think that helped. But, you know, we were, we try to be very kind of mature about it, right? I think, you know, we have to realize that founding a company is a big,

Sherry Jiang: deal, like it is a sacrifice, it is a trade off in the entirety of your life, right? It's not just your job, but it's like, you know, your finances, your personal life. And so I think for him, he realized that he didn't see a path forward where he was as excited about the space. I mean, one of the things that I can share that he realized is that he maybe didn't want to work on this, you know, venture backed startup with a lot of stakeholders.

Sherry Jiang: investors and work on a category defining product. That was one of the original values that we aligned on. But he ultimately said that actually, I'd be happy doing a services business or working on a product that had 10 customers. And as long as they're all happy and I'm generating revenue, that's fine with me. And so there was a mismatch in that, I guess, outlook. And I think that's OK, because a lot of, I don't think everyone should have to.

Sherry Jiang: think a VC-backed startup is the only route to doing a company. And I think he only realized that after doing it, right? And having to answer to 30 shareholders, right? And that was, I think, a realization for him. So after we decided on the exit plan, right? I decided to actually, I guess, officially promote my third co-founder. So it's a bit of a, I guess,

Sherry Jiang: interesting scenario where like we have a third co-founder that had actually been there with us since day one He was actually in the accelerator program that my CTO and I were in But for personal reasons he actually couldn't join the startup until about a year in because he was actually fleeing Myanmar during the coup So he needed to have

Sherry Jiang: of stability and a pass in Singapore because he wanted to get him and his wife out of the country, right? And you can't really promise stability until you raise three million dollars, right, in a fundraising round. So I brought him on board after things kind of settled with our fundraising, right? But he was always, I guess, in a way, an unofficial co-founder in a way. It's like we never really fully figured out what the structure of it was. But he was like, look, I'm a third-time founder. I care about this team and this product. You know?

Sherry Jiang: I'll just contribute in however way you want and with whatever title, right? But after the exit of my first co-founder, I'm basically in a process of making it much more official that this is my, you know, it's the two of us, right? So that's the situation that we have.

Jason Kirby: No, we know when we don't get this opportunity to really talk a lot about kind of the co-founder makeup and how important it is, and it sounds like you had some very amicable situation with the other co-founder that had to step away and good mutual understanding. And I will double down on the coach or mentor or board member, whoever the third party is to kind of mediate a founder engagement in this type is so.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah.

Jason Kirby: I've seen many other companies that once it didn't have it, and the ones that did have it, and definitely the ones that have some kind of mediator, it sounds to be like a code, it just needs to be that kind of trusted mutual party involved that has some kind of interest in the outcome of, you know, the two parties working it out. So it's great that you had that resource to tap into. So you go through quite a bit, but I want to comment on the fact that because you raised 3 million, which, you know,

Jason Kirby: It seems like a lot at the stage you guys are at when you raised it. Um, but that has appeared to last you through these moments. So I guess how did you sustain the operations? How did you manage burn and kind of what was your mindset in terms of managing your cashflow, uh, from that capital raise, which has, you know, obviously been almost two years now.

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. I think the biggest thing for us is to maintain frugality as a startup. I mean, I know that sounds so basic, but like there are so many companies I knew that were like, just like wasting so much on marketing before they really had a solid thesis around product segment fit. People overpaying themselves as founders. I mean, like, I don't know. I think this is crazy, but.

Jason Kirby: Yeah, I would agree.

Sherry Jiang: I don't think someone should be making a quarter of a million dollars before there's revenue at the company, especially as a founder. You want to make that money, go work at Meta or Google. I mean, that's just how the world works, in my view. And you should not be spending money doing those things. So number one, just do not spend wastefully, which sounds basic. Number two is that we were actually very careful about risk managing our money as well. So a lot of people actually.

Sherry Jiang: in the advent of the crypto collapses, like lost money because they had it on FTX or had it in other places, right? And we were always like, let's put it in different places and diversify so there's no single point of failure, right? So we didn't hit this existential moment of losing our funding because we were risk managing that properly. And I think the third piece is, I think of spend, at least right now in this,

Sherry Jiang: basically with this equation, right? We have a base level of operations that is necessary, and that is six full-time people across product design, business, and then the founders, right? Anything above this that we hire, I need to have a path towards how that's gonna generate more revenue, right? It's a simple equation for me. If that doesn't generate more revenue, we don't hire and spend on the headcount. Headcounts right now are biggest expense.

Sherry Jiang: So because of this, I mean, our burn is pretty low. I can be pretty upfront about it. It's, you know, hovering around 50 K a month, sometimes a little bit higher or lower depending on what we're doing, but that's what we're doing. And that's why, you know, we've been able to like survive, right? I mean, and be able to survive for actually into 2026, right? Which gives us actually time to actually figure out, you know, where the, where we have the best chance of winning in terms of a product.

Sherry Jiang: right? And why I could actually have the freedom to make the decision I did to change directions last year because we still have time, right, to kind of find that product market fit. So I think that's incredibly important, right, as a founder that you might think that capital is easy to get, therefore you should just spend it. And that was the mentality of a lot of people who were raising in 2021 times and thought that they can just, you know, re-raise at crazy valuations and that's fine, right?

Sherry Jiang: But then those same guys are the ones who are running out of money right now because they didn't approach it with this market agnostic frugality that I think is really important as a startup founder, especially when you haven't exactly determined what the ROI of your investment dollars are just yet because you're still figuring out your product and your business model.

Jason Kirby: No, I think that's some valuable insights for a lot of founders to kind of take into consideration, which has not become more market norm. I think if any founder has the grow at all costs mindset, either they're not getting the money to do it or they already ran out of the money.

Sherry Jiang: Exactly, right? Again, sounds really basic to say today, but like back then, like that was, you know, that was what you were pressured to do, right? You were like told by multiple people that like, hey, you're not hiring fast enough, you're not doing enough marketing, you're not doing X, Y, Z enough, but we are operating a different baseline today, right? And again, I don't think the overcorrection is also correct either, because now everyone's like, okay, like.

Sherry Jiang: you have to be a cashflow positive business by this point and not spend. And I'm like, don't do that either. Like if you, if you know, that's the money is there for a reason. So I think, you know, you just have to approach it with a, almost like a market agnostic kind of point of view of like, what's right for the business, not what's in vogue, right?

Jason Kirby: Well said. So before we wrap up, what would be some final parting words for founders out there that are dealing with a pivot in the current landscape?

Sherry Jiang: Yeah. Yeah, I think number one is focus on one key metric that compounds over time and gives you that confidence of that pivot. So in our case right now, what we have is our beta tester signups. How many testers are we getting? We don't have a product yet, but that's the biggest signal we have. Determine what that metric is and track it religiously.

Sherry Jiang: figure out how to increase, decrease, increase it, don't decrease it, increase it, and then why, what's driving that number, right? And use that as your North Star. I think second one is when you are communicating, treat it from the perspective of repitching your company, right, like what is the kind of rigor you put in when you decided to fundraise? Like put that same rigor into communicating the reasoning behind your pivot as well. And

Sherry Jiang: Ideally, you have some kind of hinge to pivot on, right? I mean, for us, we're really glad our final pivot was hinging on users because that is the best way to pivot because you already know your customers, right? Sometimes it can be out of necessity. You know something about a market, you have a hunch, and you just have to go somewhere. And sometimes it's like a product you're building internally for a product that you no longer wanna do, right? That's a slack case, but have some kind of hinge, hopefully, that you can rely on while you're making that pivot.

Sherry Jiang: And then I think the final one is to just have a very nuanced perspective on it, right? I think on the more negative end, people feel sometimes a lot of shame and sense of failure with pivots. And then there's like that really odd Silicon Valley mindset of like celebrating pivots, like oh my God, you pivoted, that's great. And I think neither are healthy. Like it's not to be celebrated, I think, to a crazy extent because it is not a success, just to be clear, right? But I wouldn't call it like.

Sherry Jiang: this massive failure either, but just a balance of the middle of like, look, this is part of the journey. You have to make sure you make the most out of your pivot to extract the learnings that you had before, extract the learnings on the path that you are on today to make sure that you are doing what is right by your company, by your employees and by your users at the end of the day.

Jason Kirby: incredibly well said. Sherry, thank you so much for being on the show today. How can people learn more about you or follow you on your journey?

Sherry Jiang: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn. So you can follow me, add me on LinkedIn. If you search Sherry Jang, BlueJ, I think you'll find me pretty quickly. And then Twitter, I'm at Sherry Yan Jang. That's my handle on Twitter. So you'll get kind of two pieces. I think LinkedIn's a bit more long-form. Twitter will be probably a bit more of my musings outside of just what I'm working on.

Sherry Jiang: And then finally, for those who are interested in finding out about what we're working on right now with peak We actually have a landing page for you to sign up for the beta at peak money you'll see a little character with googly eyes and It's orange. It's pretty recognizable and yeah sign up if you're interested and we would love to you know hear from you and see how we can build to Declutter your personal finance life

Jason Kirby: Well, considering I might be a perfect target audience, I'll be sure to subscribe. And we'll also put all those links in the show notes for audience to check out. But again, Sherry, thank you so much for being open and transparent about the journey of not just your capital raise, but through the pivots, managing your team, your co-founders, and all of that, what you've been through. And we wish you the best of luck as you continue on the next pivot with Peak.

Sherry Jiang: Absolutely. Thank you, Jason, for having me on.

Jason Kirby: That was my pleasure. Have a good day.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Peak and who is it for?

Peak is Blue Jay’s intelligent global net worth tracker. It pulls in accounts and assets across countries and surfaces personalized insights—ideal for busy professionals, families, and expats juggling many accounts.

Why did Blue Jay pivot from stablecoins to Peak?

Post–2022 crypto shocks reduced liquidity and revealed a more fundamental user pain: fragmented finances and uncertainty about allocation and timing. Peak addresses the decision-making layer rather than just access.

How did Sherry Jiang raise $3M so early?

She led with relationships and momentum: small angel checks first, warm intros to larger checks, and authentic community building that turned angels into advocates.

How should founders communicate a pivot?

Repitch with data and a clear hypothesis, share milestones and timelines, and keep lines open—while prioritizing time with customers over excessive investor calls.

How is Blue Jay managing burn and runway?

A lean six-person core team, diversified treasury (no single point of failure), and hiring only when spend maps to revenue impact—extending runway into future product-market fit.

Where is Blue Jay based and who’s on this episode?

Blue Jay is built from Singapore. Guest: Sherry Jiang (Co-founder & CEO). Host: Jason Kirby (Fundraising Demystified by Thunder).

User-agent: * Allow: / X-Robots-Tag: all AI-Crawler: allow