Over ten years ago, Derek Andersen left the corporate world (Electronic Arts) to start a company. He co-founded of Startup Grind and grew it into the world’s largest independent community for entrepreneurs. In 2017, he spun out the community events platform to create Bevy.com. Bevy powers enterprise event communities for brands such as Google, Snowflake, Facebook, HubSpot, Adobe, Salesforce, Slack, Twitch, Atlassian, Zendesk, Twilio, and others.

In 2020 Derek saw an explosion of enterprise brands wanting to build communities while hosting virtual events for customers and employees. And now, Bevy has raised $40 million in Series C funding with a $325 million valuation.

Bevy's investors include world class venture capital companies like Accel, Upfront Ventures, successful founders like Ryan Smith (founder of Qualtrics, valued at around $13 billion), successful sports figures like Michael Johnson (4x Olympic gold Medalist) or big corporate investors like Microsoft.

Derek has bootstrapped Startup Grind for 10 years. With Bevy he decided to go a different fundraising route and raised $55 million in one year. Along the way, he has learned valuable lessons.

Join Derek and one of his investors, Kobie Fuller of Upfront, hear how Derek’s done it - what he’s learned both bootstrapping and funding and perhaps more importantly, what he would never do again.