#4 Lessons from Raising $22 Million & Failing (Shruti Shah, Founder of Move Loot)

“We raised our seed round of $2.8M in 2 1/2 weeks” Sounds sexy, right? One of the saddest things I see from some founders is an excessive focus on fundraising as their “saving grace”. Yet, they have no traction or lack a clear path forward to generate traction. Many founders are wasting their time finding investors because A. They haven't de-risked the investment through traction or B. They aren't VC-backable. Even the best founders and teams fail but they had traction where investors were willing to take the risk like Shruti Shah. -Her company was generating $30K MRR when they raised a seed of $2.8M in 2.5 weeks. -A Chinese billionaire CAME TO HER to offer $11M for Series A. -She went through YC. Did checks guarantee success?  Nope. Shruti spills the tea and more importantly her lessons from scaling and failing: -Dangers of growth for growth's sake. -Pivoting away from the original model to raise more capital that decreased revenue nearly 7X. -What led to growing a team 3X & laying off 1/2 a month later. -Why she’s creating a founder-friendly fund around alternative financing. About Shruti Shah She is an advisor, investor, consultant, and coach who works closely with early-stage startup founders as they work to scale their businesses.  She's in the process of launching a new fund that has developed a new model to fund startups. She was most recently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Silicon Valley Bank where she worked with the early-stage practice team on strategic partnerships. She was previously the co-founder and COO of Y Combinator-backed Move Loot, an online full-service marketplace for buying and selling used furniture, where she led the national expansion and general business operations. Over the course of three years, she and her co-founding team raised $22 million dollars to scale the business across the United States. Move Loot was featured in numerous publications including Forbes, TechCrunch, Bloomberg Business Week, CNN, TIME, Fortune, and more. Subscribe & Rate Now. #getsshitdonepodcast Learn More About the Get Sh!t Done Accelerator: shegetsshitdone.com/accelerator Join Our Traction Membership Community Waitlist: https://bit.ly/3giCEkC Have feedback, a show topic you want us to cover, or just want to say hi: [email protected]