The last startup I worked at was doing okay, but really nothing to write home about. Customer feedback was mixed. The company was bleeding cash with no path to profitability. To us on the inside, the future looked bleak.
And yet, we were able to raise a large Series C round, in a brutal funding environment! After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, Silicon Valley became a graveyard. Every third office building had an “Available for Rent” sign on it. Many VCs also closed shop. Despite all these odds, this company raised a large round.
Years later, I realized how this happened. It was the founder! He knew his stuff like nobody else did. Despite the average company performance, VCs would have decided that this was someone they wanted to back. They would have felt that this founder had the passion and the ability to navigate the business through thick and thin and to build a long-term sustainable business.
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