Tikue Anazodo, co-founder and CEO of Kudos, discusses his journey from working at major tech companies to building his startup.
Tikue Anazodo, co-founder and CEO of Kudos, discusses his journey from working at major tech companies to building his startup. He also shares insights on how to create value for investors and effectively monetize a business from day one.
how how how has been to the the journey of raising money because going from raising from individuals to institutionals um how has that been you know for you as well? Yeah, it it's been um it's not been a straight path definitely because we've I mean that 30 the 20 million that we've raised it's been over like four like we've raised a little bit of capital every year um with four million in the first year and then 3 million the second year 10 million third year and then four four million like three million fourth year and part of it is that when we raised in 2021 the market had certain expectations for what the next round would like what the milestones for the next round were. But then over the last four years, every year those expectations have actually changed because you go into 2022 and the market was anti-fintech, anti-consumer. Um, and so the the bar to actually be a successful
consumer company went really high. And we were very fortunate in that like 2022 we raised a bridge from our existing investors. Um, and our existing investors have actually been a very big part of our story through this journey because QED had a really small check in our first round, a slightly bigger check in our second round, and then led our series A two years ago. Um, and yeah, so QD ended up leading our series A when we had that big inflection point two years ago. Um, we were about to go to market, Q was already an existing investor and they preempted the series A. And um last year we did a small bridge and right now we are actually um closing a strategic round. One thing that we've had to change our mindsets on which I think is healthy is I think when we started we used to think more very aggressively about what is the next milestone and what are the things that we need to do to
get to the next milestone which is an important thing I think to think about. But over time, I think we started to spend a lot more time thinking about how do we build a business that actually takes off because and when I say take off, I mean there's this concept of being perpetually on the runway. Um, but at some point you want to kind of take off where the business has a path to cash flow positivity where you are able to dictate the terms on which you raise around. In the last year and a half, we've started to focus on actually building the monetization engine and that's working. And so that's something we're really focused on scaling going forward so that even as we think about future rounds of capital, we go with a lot more leverage because our business doesn't necessarily need the capital, but the capital is fuel that actually accelerates something that works really well. Now this
is super interesting.