Thread by @MurtazaBambot

I want to introduce myself 👋

Over the past 4 years I...
• Built a startup
• Became homeless
• Lost $2,000,000 & all our customers
• Started @HeartbeatChat
• Built a team, new product, & raised $700k in 6 mos

Here's my story 🧵

(2017) In college, I saw my friends struggle to get hired.

So built a job board with my roommate — you could 1-click apply & submit 150 tailored applications in 15 min.

It grew fast.

n.pr/3lO0glR

We reverse-engineered other job boards & figured out how to get our site links posted to the job boards for every major college in the US.

In 8 months, we jumped from 1,000 to 25,000 users

But we had no way to monetize.

The night before graduation — my co-founder told me he was out.

We'd agreed on building this full-time. But secretly he took a job at Google.

He left with $5k in pitch competition money he felt was "his share".

I had $800 in my bank account, no job, and a failing business 🎓

I spent the next 3 mos living in my car, crashing on couches, and sleeping wherever I could.

I worked 15 hr days, and ate oatmeal, peanut butter, and bread to live.

We tried to raise money. Everyone said no

After several failed attempts to monetize & raise money, we pivoted.

We built a data platform for recruiters & raised $150k.

Over the next year we signed 30 customers like Stack Overflow, Clutter, and Samsara.

Things were finally working.

And then covid hit.

At the time, we were wrapping up a $2,000,000 seed raise. Terms sheets were in.

Then lock-down hit NYC.

Our lead investor called us and pulled out. Within 30 min our whole round fell apart. Hiring freezes started after the rona layoffs. 28 of our 30 customers cancelled on us.

I spent a month completely broken.

Everything we'd built over 3yrs had fallen apart in 4 days.

I couldn't check my email without getting panic attacks. I'd wake up and just start drinking because I couldn't face myself sober.

I had to move forward. @sethradman got me a job at Georgia Tech's startup accelerator.

I leaned in, learned as much as I could, and put in tons of extra hours.

I served as their fundraising lead, head of their community, and put all my time into empowering their founders.

We turned community into our secret weapon 👊

Community intros & support helped founders raise at YC-level valuations, snowball to 6-figure revenue in 3 mos, and ship product faster than ever.

But this meant 80-hr weeks trying to hack Slack, Notion, and Airtable together.

I set out to help others turn community into their secret weapon.

@mayhul_arora and I founded @heartbeatchat in Oct 2020

4 months later, we launched on web, desktop, iOS, & Android.

We hit Facebook-level stickiness (78% 30-day ret)

We'd struck gold here 🏆

We set out to raise $500k, and @paigecraig took the lead.

Within 7 days, he'd set another 70 meetings on my calendar.

We ended up closing $700k, and turning down even more than that.

We hired an amazing team & have been heads down for months.

Our goal: to empower community builders & create a world where anyone can jump online and find their tribe.

Community is the future ❤️

Next week, I'll share more about what we've learned & the nitty-gritty of how we're creating a more radically inclusive internet.

Be sure to drop a follow & join me for the ride 🚀