We raised two and a half million dollars on a twelve million dollar valuation after nine months of fundraising post-Y Combinator demo day.

I had no choice but to bootstrap my company for the first year. I focused on optimizing for a fast and efficient fundraising process because I was warned that a long fundraising process could kill a company.

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

We bootstrapped for a year in San Francisco, which was tough, and when I raised our first round, it mainly went to cover expenses I was already paying personally.

Despite initial struggles, we showed some growth, prompting an investor to suggest we raise a Series A round, which I eagerly prepared for.

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.

We raised our Series A after initially facing many rejections, but ultimately secured $3-4 million from various investors.

The first million dollars I raised felt easy because I was raising money from people I knew well, who were investing in me personally.

I made the mistake of comparing my startup to competitors who had already raised money, which led to unrealistic expectations about my own fundraising efforts.