Raising $55M in One Year: How I Did It

About this event

Derek Andersen is the co-founder of Startup Grind and of Bevy. in 2017, Startup Grind spun out our community events software to create what is now Bevy. Derek has bootstrapped Startup Grind for 10 years and just announced a Series C round for Bevy, bringing their valuation to $325 million.

Alongside 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.

Speakers

Derek Andersen

Bevy / Startup Grind

Co-founder & CEO

See Bio
Kobie Fuller

Upfront Ventures

Partner

See Bio

Derek Andersen

Bevy / Startup Grind

For the past 15 years Derek has been building communities. He is the Co-founder/CEO of Bevy, a SaaS product that helps companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Google, Snowflake, and Adobe build virtual and in-person communities. He co-founded Startup Grind, a community of 600 Chapters in 125 countries educating, inspiring, and connecting startup people. Since 2012, Startup Grind has hosted 15,000 events for more than 500,000 people. In 2010, he co-founded Commonred which was acquired by Income.com. Derek also previously worked as a product manager at Electronic Arts. He currently lives in Palo Alto, CA with his wife and four children.

Kobie Fuller

Upfront Ventures

Kobie is a partner at Upfront Ventures, the largest and longest-running venture firm in Southern California. He joined the firm in 2016 and has led investments in companies including TheWaveVR, Cordial, Bevy, The Mighty and MetaCX. Kobie has deep experience in SaaS businesses, marketing technologies, and emerging technologies including VR and AR (he was an early personal investor in Oculus which was acquired by Facebook for $3BN). Kobie joined Upfront from Accel, where he was involved in investments including Campaign Monitor, UserTesting, AdRoll, and Invoca. Prior to Accel, Kobie was the Chief Marketing Officer at REVOLVE, one of the largest global fashion ecommerce players based in Los Angeles. Earlier in his career, Kobie helped found OpenView Venture Partners and was an investor at Insight Venture Partners where he sourced notable early investments in Exact Target (acquired by Salesforce for $2.5B) and Instructure (NYSE: INST.) Kobie received an AB in Economics from Harvard University where he was also captain of the track team and a multi Ivy League champion.