It takes a village to raise a child, is what they say - and the same goes for building a company. That is why I wanted to tell you a bit about the story behind our fundraise and the past months to give you an insight into all the people involved.
Looking back at the last year, it was turbulent. From figuring out what impact COVID will have on the business long-term and constantly fighting people who wanted to tell us to pivot, to getting back on the (exponential) growth path and raising a Series A in only two weeks.
The one thing that really got us through the last year was the team. When shit hits the fan, you actually see what loyalty means and I couldn’t have wished for a better team to go through that rollercoaster with. Everyone pushed through and continued believing in what we do, and also found the strength to deal with a massive increase in volume over the first quarter with very limited capacity. Big kudos to all of you!
When we got more clarity on the long-term implications of COVID on global mobility, we decided to dive into a rebranding project to reflect all these changes in how we communicate and represent ourselves. It was a great project, but also showed our resource constraints again. While pushing through it and trying to hire on the side, we started getting more and more traction from investors again. Well deserved kudos to the team again, and especially two new joiners - Elsa and Hanna - who made sure the project was a great success.
Even though we thought it would be time to rest after that project, we took the leap and jumped into fundraising mode. It took a week to prepare the deck, the CRM, and off we went. The next rollercoaster took off, and the next two weeks were anything but comfortable. Fundraising isn’t pretty, and at the end of it, I felt like a featherless chicken - but we had the term sheets we wanted, and a number of great angels in addition to that. Another round of kudos goes out to our existing investors, who helped me throughout the whole process, with feedback, advice and many intros. Having the right investors on board matters, a lot!
What I hadn’t thought about at that stage is, that fundraising is not all of it, the due diligence is yet to come, which is probably even more work than the fundraising itself. As the summer holidays were approaching, we decided to try and hurry up to do our press release ASAP. More pressure yet. We managed to get it done, within less than a month. The last kudos of this post goes out to our new investor Blossom, who did everything they could to make it happen - and my all-time favourite lawyers at Orrick, who did an amazing job, as always.
I couldn’t have been happier when the press release went out yesterday, and I am beyond grateful for everyone supporting us. The last 8 weeks were probably the most uncomfortable ones of my life, and I really look forward to sleeping A LOT in the next days. But it was worth it, 100%. Thanks again to everyone for making it happen. We promise more great things to come!
