We raised money for the first time after five years of existence, once we had a clear picture of our market and customer traction.

Despite not having a technical co-founder, I was able to raise our seed round because I had passion, a market, and proof of concept.

At HireArt, I faced a moment of potential failure when we hadn't raised any funding while others had, but my co-founders encouraged me to keep pitching until we found an investor who believed in our mission.

Our early pitch for Figma was unfocused, but we were fortunate to have investors who believed in our potential to figure things out as we progressed.

In the early days, we struggled to raise money, which taught us to focus on solving real problems and to build an efficient, profitable business from day one.

We were confident about our startup, thinking we would get a lot of PR and funding, and we did receive significant media attention and raised $1.2 million in funding.

Initially, we thought we were on the path to success, but I later realized that we were not converting users into paying customers because we were too focused on fundraising and PR instead of creating a product that people actually needed.

Despite having a promising product, we struggled to secure investment, leading us to consider launching on Kickstarter, which was suggested by Paul Graham. We built our Kickstarter page and filmed the video ourselves, starring our friends and interns.

When we launched our MVP in 2014, we had a transaction on the very first day, which confirmed our belief in the business model.