Fund/Build/Scale mini-episode | From seed stage to Series A with Coalesce CEO Armon Petrossian [Part 1]

I interviewed Coalesce CEO and co-founder Armon Petrossian in February 2024 to talk about his company's journey from seed stage to Series A. I had no idea he was already working on his next round: just a few weeks after we recorded this interview, Coalesce announced a $50M Series B. To help me prepare, his team shared their slightly redacted Series A pitch deck, which was immensely helpful. I'd intended to make this a mini-episode, but there was so much here, I decided to break it up into two parts. Part 1: why building in stealth was the right call for Coalesce [1:39] guiding principles for who should — and should not — build in stealth [4:22] how to manage customer discovery without revealing too much [6:50] why they used their seed round "to build out the team as quickly as possible" [10:12] midway through 2022, fundraising dynamics "changed radically" [11:33] when investors pushed for a Series A, "I was like, that's crazy" [13:05] starting up in San Francisco when you don't have industry connections [15:52]