Sramana Mitra: So, if you’re comfortable disclosing, how much money did you raise during that ten-year period from 2010-2020, and what kind of exit did you get, numerically? Lance Newhauser: We ended up raising about $35 million for 4C specifically from 2010 to 2020. There was some debt layered on top of that as well.
Sramana Mitra: How did you address this complex sales cycle issue? Because that could really block velocity.
Sramana Mitra: So then in this story, at what point did you raise the venture capital? Is this 2010? Lance Newhauser: Yes, 2010. Sramana Mitra: What did you do before going out to raise money? Did you do some amount of customer development, validation work? Whom were you selling to? What was the positioning?
Sramana Mitra: From your personal career journey point of view, I have gone through a similar journey. After I did three startups as Founder CEO, I started consulting because I just wanted to do something else and learn a different skill. I didn’t want to be a CEO, I wanted to learn something else. I
Sramana Mitra: The track that we have is bootstrapping using services, which your story also speaks to. Services companies bring in revenues very early and that helps a lot. So bootstrapping using services to exit is a wonderful track actually.
Sramana Mitra: I assume that since it was a services company, you were able to bootstrap it, right? Lance Newhauser: Yes, it was a service company that we initially bootstrapped. We did bring on one investor who put a few thousand dollars into the company so that we could go get some office space and
Lance bootstrapped his first company to an exit. He venture funded his second company and exited after 10 years. He is about to launch his third. Read on, great story.
Sramana Mitra: Can you give me an example of a Lego block that AI has enhanced? What was the Lego block and what did AI do to enhance that Lego block?