Episode 787 | "We Shut Down a $1.5M Product, and Raised $10M Instead"

You're listening to Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling. In this episode, I have a conversation with Braden Dennis. He's come back on the show. He's the cofounder of FinChat, and they have recently rebranded to fiscal dot a I after raising a $10,000,000 series a. I don't cover a lot of venture raises on this podcast because we focus on bootstrapped and mostly bootstrap companies. But now and again in our ecosystem, we are seeing bootstrappers who catch lightning in a bottle. And they realize that the opportunity that they've stumbled upon has much more potential than they originally thought. And some of those folks decide to sell early, some folks continue to bootstrap, and others decide to go that venture route. And today, Braden and I discuss that decision about why he and his cofounders decided to shoot for the moon. As you can tell by the title, we also talk about how they shut down a $1,500,000 ARR product, and we do a quick recap of what got them here. You can hear more of that in his prior episode, which I mentioned during the interview. Before we dive into that conversation, I wanna let you know about our MicroConf local chapters. Building a business can be isolating, but it doesn't have to be. So inside MicroConf Connect, which is our online membership community, we are launching local chapters to help you meet each other in person. Our first local chapters will be taking place in Barcelona, Toronto, Sydney, Austin, and London, giving you the chance to share challenges, exchange ideas, and build relationships with other founders in your area. Alongside these local chapters, we're also opening up the MicroConf ambassador program. If you wanna help bring founders together in your city, you can apply to become an ambassador. We'll provide everything you need, a comprehensive playbook, promotional support, and swag to make your event successful. Because no event can be successful without swag. Am I right? If you're looking for accountability, collaboration, or just good conversations over coffee, apply to join MicroConf Connect and become a part of the community to learn more about local chapters and the ambassador program. Head to microconfconnect.com. And with that, let's dive into my enlightening conversation with Braden Dennis. Braden Dennis, welcome back to the show. Mister Walling, it's always good to see you. So good to have you, man. So you were on episode 705 of this very show. It was March 19, so just over what about fifteen months ago. And we talked about how your, SaaS app called Stratosphere, how you went from bootstrapped to taking money from tiny seeds, so we said mostly bootstrapped, to then going venture backed. And I believe you had raised what a pre seed round. What was it? 2,000,000, 3,000,000? It was 1 and a half. 1 and a half. Okay. And we covered a bunch of topics. How you you rebranded to FinChat. I have more of …