Alex Salazar on Taking Arcade from Zero to a $12M Round (Alex Salazar / Arcade - Ep 56)
Alex Salazar didn’t need to prove he could build a company. He’d already done that and sold it, then spent time as a VC, and had the kind of background that usually makes raising money the easy part. But when he started Arcade, he decided to do things differently. In this episode, we talk about what it means to go back to zero even when you don’t have to. Alex shares why he and his co-founder stayed in stealth, how they tested product ideas without writing a single line of code, and what it took to get real traction in a category moving as fast as AI. We get into opportunity selection, investor conviction, and what it actually looks like when someone gets preempted before they’re even out fundraising. Arcade eventually closed a $12M round... but the process behind that raise had very little to do with pattern-matching or momentum. It was all about building something that hit a nerve.
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<p>This is a fantastic episode covering one of the most important insights around fundraising</p><p></p>
Fundraising Holiday Blues (Grapevine)
Fundraising for software that supports charitable giving started off as a challenge for Grapevine CEO Emily Rasmussen. After unlocking the fundraising story that would gain traction, she ran into another challenge. The year-end holidays disrupted her momentum and threatened to sabotage an exciting round. Emily shares how she weathered the storm and the important lessons she learned about the impact of calendar timing when raising.
If at First You Don't Succeed (Humming Homes)
Adeel Mallick, the co-founder and CEO of Humming Homes, had the perfect background to start a company and lead a fundraise. Experience at startup studios, an MBA, and stints at top venture capital firms had him setup to knock the first fundraise for his startup out of the water. When things didn't go as planned, Adeel had to reflect, regroup, and recommit to the process to get his company the seed funding it needed to scale.
The Culture of Preemptive Rounds (Neuro-ID)
Jack Alton was a startup vet before he was recruited to join Neuro-ID as its CEO in 2016. His requirements to join included headquartering the company in Montana and building a remote first culture. Back then those pursuits were not only rare but considered flaws. 5 years later, they would be come major reasons for Canapi Ventures to preempt Neuro-ID's Series B round.
Catching a Steady Wave🏄
In 2016, Guy Friedman was a successful startup founder with an exit. Most would think that would make raising money for his next company SteadyMD a breeze. Instead, none of his prior investors decided to back him and he was on a familiar grind to getting funding. Fast forward to 2020 and Guy was steadily growing his core business when a wave hit in the form of acceleration towards telemedicine. All of the sudden he was surfing and fundraising became a very very different experience.
The Foreign Language of Fundraising
Parker Treacy had to become fluent in two completely foreign languages, Portuguese and Fundraising, on his path to building Cobli out of Brazil.
Learning the Fundraising Dance
Erin Carpenter grew up focused on becoming an entertainer with classical training as a ballerina. When she went to raise money, she found that the fundraising dance was surprisingly hard to learn.
Investor Psychology 101
Nicole Emrani Green's journey from the rambunctious daughter of Persian immigrants to venture-backed CEO had twists and turns. Surprisingly, her first career in psychotherapy gave her some of the tools to help advance herself as a leader and successfully close a $4MM Seed round for her company Givingli.
Stayin' Alive🎶
Matt Pohlson, co-founder and CEO of Omaze, has had one of the most death defying startup journeys ever. Time and time again, his company has been on the brink of death, only to be saved by Matt’s persistence and never-quit attitude. While most involved nearly running out of funds, one experience involved his own near death experience as he flatlined on an ER bed with his family surrounding him. Persistence brought him back from the brink and eventually back to Omaze where he used an even stronger belief in their mission to lead a Series B fundraise in March of 2020 just as COVID began impacting the world.
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