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Berberian: Sphero completed six VC rounds culminating in a $52M round

Paul Berberian · 20VC: How Entrepreneurs Should Manage Their Board & Why Time Constraints Are Always The Key To Progress with Paul Berberian @ Sphero · Aug 19, 2016 · at 15:41

Paul Berberian is the CEO of Sphero, a consumer robotics startup. He details the step-by-step capital raising journey of the company.

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“We raised our money a million dollars, and we had to get somewhere to show that we were worthy of getting another tranche of money, and that was our series B, which was five million, and then we had to do something with that to get our next Five million. Then we had to do something with that to get to our next seven million. And then we did like an 11 or twelve million dollar round. And then we did a 45 that turned into like a fifty two million dollar round. So we went through six rounds of financing.”

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