James Hirschfeld, co-founder and CEO of Paperless Post, reflects on the pitfalls of raising a $25 million funding round in 2014.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.6s
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“The thing about having a lot of capital When you're a small company is that you can put it behind the wrong strategy and you don't, you lose touch with the practical reality of the business.”
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More from James Hirschfeld
Opinion
James Hirschfeld: Ad-supported monetization degrades digital event invitation products
“I wanted it to be a premium product from the outset because the kind of incumbent competitive options were free and ad-supported, and I thought that there was, it was a really bad idea to try to monetize an invitation product, which by definition- It just look…”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 25:26Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
AssertionPartly supported
Hirschfeld: Paperless Post's lead seed investor discovered startup via an invitation
“Our first investors came to us through the product. Our first, the lead investor of our seed financing round was This was a someone from a fund called Moose Partners and he received an invitation, and he just got it.”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 29:20Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
Disclosure
Hirschfeld: Paperless Post raised seed funding on an event ticketing model
“So we raised money on the back of this revenue stream around ticketing, but the organizations that were using us for ticketed events were harder to acquire and much harder to serve.”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 33:16Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
AssertionNot checkable as stated
James Hirschfeld: Paperless Post did $100,000 in sales in December 2009
“I remember in December of 2009 that we did a 100,000 dollars in sales.”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 39:51Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Paperless Post reached full-year profitability in 2021 after years of seasonal spikes
“We had had, we had always been running kind of close to profitability, and we would have court, we would always be profitable in Q four probably since 2000 and Christmas. Yeah. Since 2010, we'd have a huge surge, but we, we've been profitable since 20, 21 in t…”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 43:46Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Paperless Post's physical stationery generated $500,000 in its first 10 weeks
“I think we did five, 500,000 dollars in sales in the first, like, 10 weeks of paper.”
James HirschfeldOct 7, 2024▶ 45:39Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld
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