Andy’s Crux Point
It was all going according to plan. It was working the way you dream one day it will.
We’d raised a monster $12,000,000 Series A to fund the massive growth we were seeing in our consumer facing app and to launch our B2B data platform and grow a worldclass SaaS sales team. We’d go on to grown our team from 11 to 40 employees in the next 9 months and successfully launch that SaaS platform with over $1,000,000 in sales in the first quarter.
We were on such a tear that our existing investors were positioning themselves to take our Series B and had told us pretty explicitly not to talk to other VCs. We were flying high and never saw what happened next coming. No one did.
Jeff was our lead investor and board member from day one. He was more than that. He was our mentor and crazy uncle who pushed us to dream bigger and never settle for second place. He was as much a part of the founding team as me and my cofounder.
A few weeks after our Q4 board meeting where he had all but written us our next check, it was his birthday. Jeff, being the gregarious man he was had two birthday parties planned for himself. So after a lunch time celebration with his team in San Mateo, he and another one of our investors and his dog got into Jeff’s plane and took off for upstate California where his dinner party celebration would take place.
Tragically, weather snuck up on them and when forced to flying using only the instrument panel, they crashed and didn’t survive.
Not only did we lose a friend and mentor, we lost over 40% of our cap table in an instant. We lost the financial backing of the person who believed in us as much, if not more than we did.
My cofounder and I immediately went to work trying to understand what situation we no found ourselves in. We were counting on the investment that Jeff had promised to arrive in the next couple weeks. Our other investors were expecting the same. But all of a sudden, with the largest investor and most outspoken board member gone, confidence waned and our fate was in the hands of less committed investors.
We’d limp by for a few months on small investments from others. But a predatory terms that rocked our cap table.
We’d lose half our team in the following six months and another quarter of team by the end of that year.
My cofounder and I funded payroll on multiple occasions and had to fend off lawsuits by vendors who were tired of waiting for our next investment to arrive.
All the while keeping a stiff upper lip to the public, being featured on the TODAY Show, CNBC, Fox News, and CNN. We were a big success to anyone not really paying attention but on the inside, we were a dead man walking.
At the end of that year, one of our clients was in town with VIP tickets to see Mumford and Sons. As far as they knew, we were still doing great and the hiccups of the year were unknown or a distant memory.
But as I stood there fully aware of the situation, I became even more fully aware of what I needed to do next.
“How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
My weakness I feel I must finally show”
“My weakness I feel I must finally show…”
As those lyrics rang out, “My weakness I feel I must finally show…” I decided to step down from my own company the next day. I knew that I was as unhealthy as I’d ever been, both mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially. I had given it my everything and my everything had not been enough and I had nothing left to give.
If I hadn’t stepped down off that mountain then, they would have had to send a heli-rescue team after me because I would’ve been too far gone.
Since that fateful moment at the concert, I’ve refound my spirit to climb and found a true calling in climbing along side others in need of an experienced guide. Most of the time, my work is offering a level of support and intellectual sparring that helps my clients make it through their X^ moment and onto the next summit. But other times, it is to help them climb down from the situation they’ve found themselves in and try another route.
This work is the work of my lifetime because it is the work that I wish someone had done with me instead of having to figure it out on my own. Tough moments happen, but knowing what to do with them and where to go next is everything that Crux Point stands for.