Bounce's founder shares how the company faced over 100 rejections before raising a $12M Series A from a16z. After an angel round in 2018 and years of staying loosely connected with a16z partner Andrew Chen, they reconnected in late 2021 when revenue had grown strong enough to catch investor attention.
You mentioned, or we kind of touching on the fundraising, right? So I would love to learn about what that fundraising journey was like, because you definitely have some pretty incredible investors with a16z on board.
Yeah, absolutely. So I just want to say early on, it was really hard for us to fundraise. We got a lot of, probably 100+ rejections. We did an angel round in 2018. And yeah, I just heard no so many times. I heard people saying, oh, people would tell me, oh, that's great that you got some traction in New York, but I think this would only work in New York. And then I was like, oh, come on. I went and I got the traction. I think I even tried to fundraise before we started building the product as well. And people were like, oh yeah, no, I'll wait until you have some traction. Then I got the traction. They said, oh no, it would only work in New York. So when It really was a slog the first couple of years. And then this past— the past few months, when I— so I actually met Andrew Chen from Andreessen Horowitz, who led our Series A. And I met him in 2018 and we had an awesome chat and he was so insightful on marketplaces that I was like, wow, this guy, I'm Amazing investor. I want to spend more time with him and learn more nuggets because when you're so immersed in your business, it's actually kind of hard to find folks who uncover insights that you haven't yet yourself uncovered. And he had uncovered like 4 of them in one 45-minute meeting, but he passed on Bounce in 2018 and we lightly kept in touch. In late 2021, so a few months ago, months ago, I was reconnecting with someone at a16z. I was asking Olivia, who works closely with Andrew on the investing side. I asked her about— we've kept in touch a bit too. I met her actually independently of Andrew. I had a question for her on the Marketplace 100 list and she was like, oh, let's catch up. And I told her about our revenue growth, which was just really wild in 2021. And from there she said, oh, do you want to reconnect with Andrew? And I said, yeah, of course. And then Andrew and I reconnected and I think that, yeah, just like in 2018, we really hit it off and we're jamming. And then he asked me if I wanted to meet more of the a16z team and I said, yeah, sure. And then I met I met a couple more folks and then from there they offered to— they said, why don't we do your Series A round? And I said, that sounds great. So this fundraise was easy, but previous ones were just a slog and/or didn't even happen.
