

3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank - jmalter
http://founderdating.com/3-founders-1-round-and-0-72-in-the-bank/
Brendan McCorkle recounts the true story of how he and his cofounders (all from DreamIt Ventures) were out of money before their round was raised and how they survived.
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zavulon
Nowhere in the post the actual earning of money is mentioned. Yes, I know, all
startups these days care about users/eyeballs, but it would be refreshing to
read about businesses that actually, you know, have a business model based on
earning real money once in a blue moon

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mweil
It's funny that you mention that, as that is my personal beef with many
startups as well. Funding is not a measure of success; revenue is. However,
this article is not about revenue. It's about the funding process. Talking
about our revenue (which we didn't have at the time, but we do have now) would
have been off topic.

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debacle
Good story, good moral. The understanding that _you_ have to ask _them_ is a
tough one to swallow. I still don't know if I'm there yet - I sort of go on
autopilot.

> As founders, we have a disproportionate share of the upside of a business,
> but we also have a disproportionate share of the downside.

Disproportionate to what? You're the founder.

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jacoblyles
I don't know why everybody doesn't start doing a rolling close. If you close
incrementally, you don't have to worry about one difficult investor holding up
the whole round.

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jonathanjaeger
How are they different from Kinvey (Techstars company at
<http://www.kinvey.com>)? I'm not a developer, so I'm judging solely on the
tagline and design I saw in the first 30 seconds of being on both sites.

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debacle
There are a lot of companies coming into the PaaS arena in recent years.

Like anything, some will succeed and some will fail.

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sbisker
Wait, you "closed an oversubscribed round shortly after the events of this
story"? How on earth was that pulled off? Was the $15,000 the signal other
investors needed to get on board? I feel like I'm only being told half of the
story here.

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mweil
This all happened during the final negotiations of our round. That last bit
takes obnoxiously long as lawyers have to talk to one another. That was the
awkward chasm we fell into: running out of cash as the final documents for the
round were being finalized.

