I’m writing this post from a table at *Startup Grind 2024, and the hustle is real, people.
Outside Redwood City’s Fox Theater, hundreds of lanyard-wearing attendees circulate, scanning the crowd for their next meet-and-greet or pitch session. As a steady stream flows in and out of the networking tent, a solopreneur who can’t rely on the buddy system combs his hair using his phone’s front-facing camera as a mirror.
No one needs to be in Silicon Valley to launch a viable startup, but it doesn’t hurt. If I were drafting a Venn diagram that plotted the highest concentration of venture capital, tech talent and entrepreneurial thirst, I’d still place the San Francisco Bay Area at its center.
“I think you can totally do it from other locations,” said Coalesce CEO and co-founder Armon Petrossian in an interview we recorded in late February about his company's journey from seed stage to Series A.
“I don't think you need to be here,” he continued. “I just think that it is going to make things easier. And there's tons of things, there's tons of opportunities, tons of different conversations and discussions that I had purely out of coincidence here by living here that I wouldn't have had if I was living in Portland, or LA, or some other city in the US.”
I planned to present this interview as a mini-episode, but we covered so much ground, I broke it up into two parts. To help me prepare, his team shared their slightly redacted Series A pitch deck, which was immensely helpful.
There’s a breakdown of both episodes below, but the parts that stood out to me the most after editing were where we talked about building in stealth and the emotional challenges that attend stepping into a leadership role.
“I'm really glad I had a degree of impostor syndrome,” said Armon. “And I'm really glad that I had a fear, to a degree, of starting this company. That being said, I try not to think about it, I try not to think about being the CEO, I try not to think about being the co-founder.”
Note: just a few weeks after we recorded this interview, Coalesce announced its $50M Series B.
Part 1:
why building in stealth was the right call for Coalesce [1:39]
guiding principles for who should — and should not — build in stealth [4:22]
how to manage customer discovery without revealing too much [6:50]
why they used their seed round "to build out the team as quickly as possible" [10:12]
midway through 2022, fundraising dynamics "changed radically" [11:33]
when investors pushed for a Series A, "I was like, that's crazy" [13:05]
starting up in San Francisco when you don't have industry connections [15:52]
Part 2:
Series A investors want to see market opportunities you've already validated [1:51]
focusing on enterprise sales from the beginning was a winning strategy [3:40]
"we had an enterprise sales option straight from the beginning' [5:21]
why he hired a full-time salesperson as soon as Coalesce exited stealth [6:52]
how he connected with co-founder Satish Jayanthi [7:22]
coping with imposter syndrome and overcoming the pressure to perform [12:18]
raising a larger Series A than planned led to better outcomes [14:23]
avoid talking to investors until you're ready to raise — then move fast [16:51]
candid advice for anyone who's interviewing with an early-stage AI startup [18:55]
*For the love of Musk, stop playing “Uptown Funk” as ambient music at tech events, you’re killing me.
