Introducing Cobble: a founder-first, all-in-one app for entrepreneurs

Today’s startup ecosystem is more vibrant than ever. Entrepreneurs are building great companies all over the United States and the world, improving the way we live. In fact, 5.4 million new businesses were formed in 2021, a 53% increase from 2019.

There’s no lack of innovation and new ideas in today’s market but for many aspiring entrepreneurs, there are barriers holding them back. Forming a legal business entity and coming up with the idea is just the beginning. So many other factors influence the likelihood of a business succeeding long-term such as product-market fit, access to funding, and more.

Most of the population doesn’t have access to the tools, education, or mentorship that would help them excel. Black, latino/a, women, and historically-excluded founders have an even harder time getting access to these resources.

The result: businesses are failing. 50% of businesses fail by year 5 and 90% by year 10.

It’s clear that the founder’s experience is lackluster. It’s not easy to make it even if you have a great idea. When I started my first company, I saw the challenges founders face firsthand. I struggled to find the tools and the community as a solo woman founder without an ivy league education. I spent so much time researching, reading, and teaching myself how to start a business. I had to become an expert in every facet of business from product management to accounting and financials. That doesn’t even include raising capital, which was a full-time job on top of building my business.

I made mistakes and failed but during the process, I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and running a business. After six years of acting as CEO, the company I spent years building was acquired. That freed up a lot of time for me to immerse myself in the startup ecosystem so I began angel investing and mentoring founders using the systems and knowledge I developed as an entrepreneur. It was during that time I became more aware of the difficulties founders, especially women and the overlooked, have to deal with when starting a company and fundraising. I knew there needed to be a way for founders to find all the resources, mentorship, and tools required to help them start a company. Then it hit me — I should build an all-in-one app that entrepreneurs can use to build their business from idea to exit. I poured over a decade’s worth of experience learning the ins and outs of starting, managing, and growing a company into Cobble.

Launching Today: Cobble is a founder-first app that makes building a company more accessible with easy-to-understand workflows & tools for business planning, marketing, financials, and more.

With Cobble, beginners and seasoned entrepreneurs can use our async accelerator to tackle the following:

• Essential documents and research: Using Cobble’s Startup Starter, founders can get their idea out of their heads with preliminary research and planning. Guided prompts and workflows will help founders create company mission/vision statements, a business model canvas, an elevator/positioning statement, and more to see if the idea is a viable business.
• Business planning: Create a business plan without the guesswork. We walk you through all the essential parts of a business plan with easy-to-follow instructions and examples. In the end, you’ll have a company-branded business plan to share with investors, advisors, or other stakeholders.
• Product roadmapping: A great product starts with an agile roadmap. Using the Product Roadmapper in Cobble, founders can toggle between kanban, timeline, and impact/effort views, determine a feature’s impact and effort levels, and plan out dev sprints.
• Marketing research and strategy: Using the marketing plan section, founders will define their marketing goals, conduct a SWOT analysis, and research the market. Users may also learn more about different types of marketing and use the ones of their choice to create a year marketing plan that will help increase brand awareness and land new customers.
• Financials: Understand your company’s current and future financials. Cobble guides founders through generating financial statements for years 0–5 with easy-to-understand questions/prompts. We created specialized workflows for CPG, service, and SaaS companies.
• Pitch decks and fundraising: Get ready for fundraising with Cobble’s Pitch Deck Builder. Follow the prompts to create a company-branded pitch deck and export it to PowerPoint. When you’re ready, use Cobble’s investor connector (coming soon) to share the materials you created in Cobble with investors in your industry for funding consideration.

In addition to the above, founders may use Cobble to manage their day-to-day communications and notes with a Personal CRM and access curated articles and downloadable templates for free in the Founders’ Library. We also created the Cobble Slack Community, a non-sales, community-led space for founders to bounce ideas off each other, find beta testers, and lean on each other for support. Join here.

We believe that founders shouldn’t struggle to find the tools, resources, and community to help them succeed. Cobble is led by a team of builders, techies, and entrepreneurs who are passionate about making starting a company more accessible. Meet the team below.

Now, anyone can sign up for Cobble and start using the app to build and scale their company. Take a look around the website to learn more about Cobble and create your free account. If you’re interested in partnering with Cobble or using Cobble for startups affiliated with your incubator, accelerator, or fund, contact jess@gocobble.com.