#Failure 2 – Closing a startup 12 months after raising 1 million USD
Raising money is one of the key challenge for any entrepreneur. Without money, no cash flow. Without cash flow, no salaries. Without salaries, not much is done.
So just imagine, you raise 1 million USD but 12 months later you’re forced to close the company.
So what happened when you’re forced to close a company that raised 1 million USD, 12 months later?
To answer this painful question, we got the chance to meet Viktor Kyosev who’ll share with us his Tinggal experience.
Originally from Bulgaria, Viktor has been operating in South East Asia for several years. During his previous adventures, Viktor was working as a Head Of Marketing for http://www.tinggal.com/.
Viktor is nowadays running a fast moving co working space called Green House, from where I had the chance of working for a few days. They now help people to penetrate South East Asian countries by giving them a 360° solution allowing them to focus on their business.
Tinggal was a marketplace listing hotels ranging from budget to villas for business and leisure travellers. Main part of the investment came from Tinggal’s Indian sister site WudStay, Mangrove Capital Partners, Simile Venture Partners, and Vikas Saxena.
Due to hard competition in the market, thin margins, team hiring difficulties & a very fast moving environment the team had to, step by step, let the staff go until the end where the heads of departments had to take the final decision.
Far from being a unique case, we’ll see in our coming podcasts more examples that prove that raising money is far from being the key to success. Other factors such as team, vision, objectives, management & more will impact you too.
During our podcast we discussed a lot the different alternatives imagined by the management to survive longer, postpone the closing date and survive.
Have you got a similar experience to share? Share it with us in comment and let us know how you handled the closing of a company after raising money!