A startup CEO used one 'cocky' slide to raise nearly $12 million - here's what it looked like
Medina's cofounders, Gordon Hempton, Wes Hather and Andrew Kinzer, had whipped up some home-grown software to automate the cold calling process so that Medina's three-person sales team could operate like a team of 20.
It worked really well and they went on a lot of sales calls but no one wanted their startup's HR software. Everyone wanted that homegrown sales tool. So the team changed course, turned it into a product and managed to quickly sell nearly $1 million worth.
Medina was keeping the company afloat the old fashioned way, from revenues, and he didn't want to bring in investors. But his cofounders, exhausted from living hand-to-mouth, convinced him to try and raise money.
He did his VC tour begrudgingly. Fighting off bankruptcy made him "very cocky. When you have a survivor mentality, you feel like, 'I don't need your money," he told Business Insider.
"I had one slide. It was a chart. I said, 'This is our revenue growth chart. We sell to sales people. Any questions?'" he recalled.
The slide had one word on it "MRR" which stands for monthly recurring revenue. "[It was] a screenshot of Recurly, the subscription payment service we were using at the time. I presented it and then I would do this trick: I would refresh the screen mid-pitch, and be like 'Oops, sorry, revenue just went up while we were talking."
That single slide landed the company a $2.3 million seed round and later, the same slide landed another $9.2 million Series A round led by Mayfield. And with that money the company grew to $10 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2016, Medina told Business Insider.
Medina has since given up his cocky attitude and raised another $30 million in 2017 (for a total of $59 million in raised capital) and now counts DFJ Growth and Microsoft Ventures among its investors.
Here's the slide:
