From laid off to venture backed in 2 months.

Wow it has been awhile since I posted...

Life really LIFED in the past year. So let's take a step back and let me reintroduce myself.

My name is Bree Flemings. 2 years ago, I came on here blabbing about an idea I had, Jem Social, an app where Creators can match with each other. I needed a technical co-founder to help with our technical strategy.

We had over 500 waitlist users and launched our beta app after 2 months. We received 2 paying users and that was it. Nobody else became a subscriber.

We realized quickly, connections are just not enough to get people to sign up. We talked to our users and the majority of them liked the app but not enough to pay. They would pay for opportunities.

Okay, so we turned it into a marketplace. I went through a pre-accelerator to help identify product market fit and we relaunched March 2024. All while I still had my full time job as does my CTO.

June 2024, a full year after grieving my father's passing and me moving from Miami to Houston, I was laid off from my job. The company went under tremendously.

I was distraught, confused and worried. I reinvested my disposable income into expanding Jem and I thought that would be the end all be all. We still weren't making money because we wanted to see how people enjoyed the product.

Well, a few weeks later, I received an interview with an accelerator program and they were blown away. July, I made it to the second interview for the program. Now August 2024, after also launched our memberships ($300 MRR currently with no money spent on ads), I was fully accepted into the program and received a 120k investment.

I am so excited for the next phase of Jem Social. We're truly disrupting the creator economy and can't wait to expand our features. We have been 100% bootstrapped up until now and can't wait for our members and brands to fully enjoy Jem!