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1/ Silicon Valley is good at covering the fundraises, the product launches, the acquisitions. 🍾 Those are important things but represent <0.1% of what building a company is about.
2/ So we wanted to pull back the curtain at Thumbtack and share the real story behind our new $150M fundraise (a lot of blood sweat & tears): thumbtack.com/blog/blood-swe…
3/ TLDR: A couple years ago we had a $100M business but we knew our existing product and business model weren't good enough. So we decided to rip up a nine-figure business and build an entirely new one. 😱
4/ The decision itself was actually the easy part. We knew we wanted to go BIG. Building a billion $ revenue business has always been our goal.
5/ BUT. Ripping apart + building a new business was HARD. It was hard on our numbers: our growth plummeted (it even went negative). It was hard on our pros: many were upset with the changes and left. It was hard on our team: morale suffered and some lost faith and quit. 😰
6/ It was also just straight-up challenging to build the new product. The new model is crazy complex and took 18 months+ to test and iterate. Building a new model from scratch is hard but imagine how much harder it is when growth is falling, loyal pros are upset, etc. 😬
7/ But despite the struggle and setbacks and stress, the team didn't give up. There were many moments that didn't feel good. In fact, there were plenty of times that just felt shitty. But the team kept their eye on the prize and pushed forward, relentlessly.
8/ And this last week, after two years of grinding, we get to share that Thumbtack's new model is working so well that Sequoia just made one of their largest investments ever: wsj.com/articles/thumb…
9/ So instead of just celebrating a fundraise...I'd like to raise a glass to the entrepreneurs and teams out there who are struggling, whose product isn't working, whose revenue isn't growing...but who nonetheless REFUSE to give up. THAT is what real entrepreneurship is about.
10/ As Elon says: "Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen." THAT is what company-building is about. It's not always fun, it's rarely easy, but it's how real companies are built.
11/ People think that startups are just founded once (at the start). But the truth is there are many founding moments in a startup's life. This is one of ours. Everyone on Thumbtack's team has earned their stripes—you are all founders now. Now, let's go chase the next 100x!
