McCarthy: BackOps AI raised pre-seed from 10VC and Gradient via cold emails
Sean McCarthy · How this 1st-time founder went from closing customers for $500 a month to $300,000 a year. | Sean... · PMF Show · May 4, 2026 · at 14:37
Sean McCarthy, founder of BackOps AI, explains how he raised his first round of venture capital after leaving Amazon in July 2024 without warm VC introductions.
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“I was just emailing VCs and it did work, you know, for the initial check that we got in actually was from 10 VC and very quickly gradient had reached out to us maybe like a week after that. So I think once you're in kind of the ecosystem you're in and then they end up leading our pre-seed, but to answer your question, I mean, it was literally just me sending a bunch of emails.”
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