Tilak shares how he raised capital by iterating his pitch through hundreds of conversations, mixing institutional investors like Inspired Capital with operators like Penny Pritzker and Alexa von Tobel. He emphasizes treating investor feedback as gold and building a cap table of mentors who actually help.
So you have some pretty incredible investors, as you mentioned, some top funds, and then founders and operators at some of the top marketplaces. So could you share a little bit more about what that fundraising journey has been like?
Yeah, it's been an incredible learning experience. Becoming a founder is a crazy journey for someone that's never done it before, and even if you've worked in big companies, it's just a whole different world. There's a level of accountability to the business and part of it is getting capital infused in the business. And fundraising is, you read about it like these big milestones, like these big press releases and all this stuff, but fundraising is actually something that I don't think many founders love doing because it takes you away from your business and it You know, and people will sit down and find every hole there is. But the fundraising journey for me was gradual almost. I reached out to a few folks that I knew, they knew somebody else, they knew somebody else. And then before you know it, you know, there's like 50 inbounds that start to happen, but it takes 50 conversations before those 50 inbounds start to happen. There's like 50 conversations around just, tightening your pitch, tightening your business, right? Like when somebody pokes a hole, when you're pitching your business, you don't dismiss it like, oh, this person's a jerk. Like, why are they doing this? Or they're, you know, you take it and it's like, oh man, is there a hole? Like, oh my God, how do we fill this hole? Like, oh, is there another gap?
Oh wow.
How do we fill this gap? It's like, it's amazing. Somebody once told me that feedback is the greatest gift that somebody can give you. And so my approach to fundraising has been taking the feedback. You don't ever want to stray from your core mission and from the core product that you believe will be successful. But there's a lot of periphery things that you may not have thought about that somebody will actually tell you to think about. And it's such a gift, you know, and you go through that enough and you're resilient enough, you'll get there. You'll always get there as long as you're listening. And as long as you're willing to take the feedback and acknowledge it and accept it and improve the pitch. It may take, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 pitches, but there's extremely successful founders that I've met who've had multiple exits under their belt who still saw, you know, 40 VCs say no to them before they had the 41st say yes and lead a monster round for them, right? And they were doing the work during those 40 pitches. Every time, every single one, go back, what can I improve? What can I change? What haven't I thought about? What went wrong there? What can go right here? And ultimately you end up building relationships, you end up building a reputation, and then it becomes easier. Then you start to gain momentum with the business and it begins to get easier. But it's just a game of patience and understanding that they're trying to make money. They have to ask you difficult questions. They have to ask you the things that you haven't thought about. And that's the best investors, the ones that that are passionate about what you're passionate about, that's why they're taking the call, but that also have thought about it as long as you have, or maybe even longer, and taking that and saying, oh, wow, thank you. Like free knowledge and free advice. It's extraordinary for 25, 30 minutes of time. And we really lucked out because I think by the time we got through our 50 to improve our pitch, we had some great investors that were interested in us. Inspired Capital led our round. And all of them were just so bullish on it. Penny Pritzker was the ex-Secretary of Commerce. So she has immense domain expertise on this space. Alexa von Tobel built LearnVest and had this massive fintech with an exit, which is extraordinary from fintech side. But then we also went out and a lot of our strategy was around not just taking institutional dollars. You always want to take some because they keep you accountable. They keep you going and they're connected. Like it helps you build your business, but then what I really love, like the part that I really love, and I lucked out with my VCs, right? Like I love them just as much, but on the operator side, there are a bunch of people that are actually doing work at either similar companies or companies that are your customers that invest, and they invest in things that they see value in. So we started talking to just kind of one person led to another, led to another, Ultimately, we started getting people that were so bullish about our business from like the founders of Instacart, like from from the C level of Uber, from from C level of DoorDash, Bird, like the CEO of Handy, the you know rideshare guy, like dot dot dot, you know, and and very very blessed and fortunate to have that type of support system where as we're trying to solve these complex problems, not only do we understand the business side of it, how to build a great extraordinary business, and how people we can call there. have mentors that have done it before, like Peter Hazlehurst, who built Uber Money, who have had missteps that we can avoid, but then also people that just understand the market deeply, that understand all aspects of the cycle deeply. One of the biggest things that I felt like I didn't have when I first started this business is a support structure. Everyone has a support structure in a traditional job because you have your peers, you have your leaders, you have your team, et cetera. At home, you have a support structure, you have your family. But when you start a company, you're just alone. And it's not until you build the right cap table around you and the right team around you that you feel like you have a support structure. And I'm incredibly impressed and thankful and grateful for all the people that are betting on us, from our investors, to the team, to the customers that we have. And for me, my fundraising strategy was keep learning, get tighter, use this as free knowledge, free advice, free feedback. And then get the smartest people you possibly can around you. It's a team game. There's no me here. We're trying to solve a really, really big problem and there's a really large group of people that care about it. And so let's get everyone together. Let's do this right.
