Oodles Corporation

10k Users In Sight

founder @ Oodles Corporation

Published on Apr 19, 2018

Hello Wefunder Investors,

We’ve now concluded the seventh month since the Wefunder first round seed financing was successfully completed and closed.  As in previous months, I wanted to provide you with an update on the many things happening with our OodlesDeals mobile app, and overall at the company.

UC - Davis Lawntopia ’18 User Growth Sponsorship

In last month’s update, we announced that OodlesDeals joined as an official sponsor for the UC - Davis annual Lawntopia ’18, a free concert for all UC - Davis students held in early April on campus.  Lawntopia was successful for OodlesDeals, driving an approximate 25% growth in the student user base at the UC - Davis campus.  A majority of students who downloaded the app at Lawntopia shared at least one of the deals on the app with their friends, and have since jointly redeemed a badge, giving them SCORCHING savings for some of their favorite venues around town.

The growth of users resulting from this event will allow us to achieve the planned 10,000 users of the app earlier than originally planned.  More details in next month’s update.

The OodlesDeals management team believes these sorts of sponsorships are scalable as the app expands to other Universities, and are already looking to sponsor similar events at the three Universities where we are currently present.

As you know, this process is a patented protected one, and is what makes Oodles - Deals & Events truly unique and added-value to use.

New Vendor Sign-ups 

In last month’s update, I described a vendor social event we planned to experiment with in Eugene, Oregon.  A pipeline of > 15 interested vendors resulted from this experiment, and during the course of the month, some of these vendors have arrived at different stages of the sales funnel, including at the final sign-up stage.

Importantly, OodlesDeals now has > 15 paying customers across the three Universities where it is available.

Customer Case Study #3

In last month’s update, I provided a case study of a BBQ restaurant, and the specific benefits they gained with the OodlesDeals app.  This month’s case study is a food truck that has been serving Mexican food to locals in Chico, CA for many years.  The owners take pride in their unique cooking approach, and prepare their food like it has been done for generations in the Michoacan area of Mexico.

The owner of the food truck was open to hearing the value the OodlesDeals app would bring to his establishment.  Said the owner, “I’ve tried many approaches to distinguish my food truck from the other Mexican restaurants in town, utilizing Yelp, Foursquare, and other similar services.  Results from these services is not always clear, while with Oodles, you know right away because students only get the deal when they use the app at our location.”

Within days of the food truck signing up, the OodlesDeals team created an on-app deal that exposed CSU-Chico students to their unique cuisine.  The Oodles’ marketing team continually informed the students using the app of the deal, via in-app notifications, e-mail & social media campaigns on Instagram & Twitter.  A growing number of CSU-Chico students started coming to the food truck for the deal on the Oodles app.  “I am very happy with the Oodles app,” said the owner, “every week I see them advertising our food truck to the growing number of students on the app.  Many of these students come to redeem the deal within the next few days, the cause-and-effect is very clear.”

> $50k Raised To-Date In Second Fundraising Round

In the seven months since the initial Wefunder seed financing round closed, and in reviewing the growth & metrics we’ve experienced to-date, we continue tracking in-line with the quantitative & qualitative expectations outlined in the original investment deck — an updated version of this deck is embedded on the recently refreshed Oodles Wefunder site (www.wefunder.com/oodles), and includes a ‘dashboard’ page that gives a summary view of each of the metrics we’re tracking, and the progress against each of these metrics.  

To remind you, the terms of this second fundraising round which was announced in last month’s update, are as follows:

  • The financial goal is to raise between $100k - $963k, the maximum amount we’re able to raise per the Regulation-K rules governing Crowdfunding
  • The 1st $75k is at a valuation of $4MM
  • The remainder of the amount we’re aiming to raise is at a valuation of $5MM

THANK YOU to those investors, including several follow-up investors from the initial Wefunder Oodles fundraising round, for believing in the promise of the OodlesDeals app.  To all other interested stakeholders, we are conducting a Founder Q&A tomorrow, April 19th, to answer any questions you might have.  We hoping you’ll join us for this event, it’s a 1/2 hour conference call starting at 6pm PST/9pm EST — for more details, click here

This next statement is the same one I’ve made in the past, and will always remain sincerely true — while our journey is just beginning, Asheesh and I owe our sincere thanks to all of you who have helped us get to this point.

Sajal Sahay

Co-founder & CEO