Burn Rate by Andy Dunn

Author:Andy Dunn [Dunn, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

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BETTING ON THE potential for new categories ahead of the proof, Jeremy and the team at Lightspeed extended us our first-ever real term sheet: an offer to invest $7 million in the company at a $30 million valuation. Pacing on the cobblestoned driveway in front of the Rosewood hotel, situated on a beautiful oak-canopied property on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park where I’d taken meetings with countless investors who had said no, I talked the proposal over with Jeremy.

“Can you give me a couple days to get back to you?” I asked him.

“How much time do you need?” he said.

“A week or so,” I replied, tentatively. I was nervous that I’d lose the offer, but I was also careful to give the impression of a competitive process, and I wanted to suss out another potential key player in the deal. I didn’t have in mind swapping someone out but rather adding someone into the mix, a specific someone who could kill three birds with one stone: get us even more money for the business, get me out of debt, and buy out Spaly.

Sometimes I wondered: What if Spaly had stayed and I had gone? Would Bonobos have been more focused and raised less capital, and built a profitable business sooner? The real world would provide me with its answer to that question within just a few years. In the meantime, things were awkward. I had lied to him when I’d said I’d stay in touch, call and ask him for advice. I never did.

I was still afraid of him—afraid of failing him, and afraid that a major shareholder of the company might hate me. Sure, Spaly was no longer a Bonobos employee, but he was still a part owner, both of the company and my psyche.

Spaly was physically gone, but Fight Club lived on.

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