Andrea Barrica Venture Partner 500 Startups
Andrea BarricaVenture Partner
500 Startups
Andrea Barrica, venture partner/EIR @
@abarrica
From Vitamin to PainKiller: Story of
$1.1M seed
2011(private chefs)
2011
We weren’t making money.
Steve Blank, a forefather of “Lean Startup”
“Congratulations, you’ve failed!”
5 Lessons
(on how to bootstrap a startup after burning $1M)
Lesson #1
don’t look back
we fired everyone
(even our customers)
Lesson #2
back to basics:find the pain
Lesson #3
empathy pay$
be delightful,get referrals
=$1M ARR in 10mo
"inDinero has saved us thousands of dollars and reduced the amount of
time I spend thinking about accounting by many hours a week. A
fantastic investment." - Kaz, CEO of Kash
Lesson #4 beware metrics
that don’t matter
the vitamin:
20K “users”“5M transactions/month”
“$2B processed”
the painkiller:
$315K MRR
-400+ paying customers
-growing 2x YoY
-99% MoM retention rate
as of early 2015:
revenueMoM % growth
CAC vs. LTV% referralsWAU/DAU
Lesson #5
find pain first, then worry about scale
“not scalable?”
315K MRR99% MoM retention rate
80% gross margins
Bonus Lesson:
diverse teams win
Diversity will make you more money.
+women+minorities+introverts
+high empathy+all ages
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