Turning down a Series A term sheet ($50m+ valuation)

After a bit of a break, we're back with Season 3 of the Make Lemonade Podcast. Joined by my co-host, James McKinven, we're kicking things off right where we left off. As we peel back the curtain on what we've been up to the last 6 months — there's a lot that's happened. We've been busy shipping as usual with some of our most exciting new features to date like usage-based billing, customer portal to our new Next.js billing application.

In the first episode back, we break down what goes into getting a term sheet for a Series A and why we ultimately decided not to take the deal (for now).

If you knew you were going to sign a piece of paper that was going to make your company worth $50m, would you turn it down and walk away?

We’ve lined up a cracking few episodes for this series of the show, including talking about walking away from the money, how shipping works at Lemon Squeezy, some of the mental challenges that come along with building a startup and a few special guest appearances along the way.

In this episode, we’re going to be unpacking the process of raising series A funding, what are the things they don’t tell you, how long does it take, do you have to go to San Fransisco and ultimately making the big decision to turn down a life changing raise.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
02:15 Topics for Season 3
04:15 What's been happening at Lemon Squeezy
08:11 The different types of raises
12:42 Why explore fundraising?
15:21 Raising in a challenging market
16:27 The pitching process
21:16 Choosing the right partner/VC
23:22 Things JR got caught out by
30:39 Why turn down the funding?

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com.

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy

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