Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

We Waited Too Long to Launch—Here’s What We’d Do Differently

4 Jun 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this candid conversation, the speakers reflect on their startup’s growth timeline, noting it took roughly a year to 18 months to reach $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). They discuss how they deliberately stayed in stealth mode and delayed announcing their seed round for almost a year, fearing idea theft and wanting to align the seed and Series A announcements. This cautious approach led to a prolonged first‑marketing moment, which they now view as unnecessary. They also highlight how external events—specifically the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT—can eclipse a startup’s own announcements, further diminishing impact. The dialogue ends with a forward‑looking question about whether they would have announced milestones earlier, underscoring the lesson that waiting too long to launch and market can hinder momentum and visibility.

How long did it take to get to a million in ARR? I think it took us like a year, 18 months or something. Yeah.
We were kind of slow. We were slow to launch. We were, there were a lot of things we weren't fast at. For example, we waited to announce our seed fundraise for like almost a year. Whoa. Because we wanted to like—
You were like, we're building in stealth.
Like— Yeah, I don't know. I think it was like, oh, are people going to copy our idea? Oh, we want to like announce and then announce our Series A at the same time. Yeah. And I think so many people talk about that now. Like I talked to so many founders who raised a cool seed and they're like, yeah, I think we're going to wait until we sign like I'm like, no, please.
Yeah, big logo.
And I'm like, dude, like you can just announce your Series A again, but like, it doesn't, people get this idea of the first marketing moment in their head and feel like they have to nail it. And it's good. People are not going to notice probably.
It's like on the off chance that like your day that you announce it gets like overblown by some other wild thing on Twitter.
So, and you built it up for a year and then it's oops, OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
Dang. So do you think going back that you would have told yourself to announce things earlier or like?
I think for marketing in particular, I think really just, you have to embrace that if you, if you fail at marketing, no one notices.