Member-only story
“The hardest part of building our company will be raising the initial funding,” I naively said to my fellow cofounders. Every one of them nodded their heads in agreement.
I continued on with my pep talk. “We’ll be home free once the funding closes. We’ve built businesses like this before. We know what we’re doing, right?”
I said those remarkable words to the team in January. It would take two more January’s before we closed our funding. That’s two years if you’re counting.
What could more difficult than your fundraising taking two years?
I was brimming with confidence after we got through our fundraising ordeal. It was 2010. The Great Recession was ending, and I felt like we had the wind at our backs.
The first few months things seemed to going to plan. Our recruiting efforts were on schedule. And our product development efforts were on schedule too.
Our board meetings were a breeze. The investors were happy with our progress. And the bumps in the road were just that, bumps.
Six months into our journey as an operational company I had to fire one of my cofounders. “Randy’s” problems working with the rest of the team had become unbearable.
