Raising Money, Responsibility and Expectations

Raising money comes with responsibility and expectations. We’ve had a great first year, but we can’t slow down now. This year, we plan to expand. We’ll delve deeper into our product’s most-used features — and roll out extensive changes to give our users an even better experience.

We’ll also focus on partner relationships and expand our engineering team to ensure we keep up the rapid pace of development as we build out sales, marketing and support efforts.

Lesson Learned on Laser Focus and Execution

No matter how quickly we move, we’ll never be able to deliver every feature that our customers request. But by focusing on a specific space (which to some may seem too niche), in our case Google Apps, we’re able to fully embed ourselves in the community. As a small company, this strategy makes us a whole lot more effective in the long run.

Finding Investors that ‘Get It’

This year I traveled all over the country and had the opportunity to have strategic conversations with some of the most successful investors in the world. Some told me that Google Apps as a platform was never going to reach critical mass, some didn’t know what Google Apps was and others thought it was the apps on an Android phone. At the beginning it was frustrating, but then I found investors that really “got it.”

There are a handful of investors that have been looking at this space for the last couple of years and completely understand the shift that is occurring and the value that our product delivers to an enterprise.

At the end, there was a clear synergy with three firms: Flybridge Capital Partners, Greycroft Partners and TriBeCa Venture Partners. Every person that I’ve interacted with at all three firms has been knowledgeable, professional and genuinely excited about what we’re doing. It was a perfect mix of location, understanding of the space, belief in our vision and, honestly, personal chemistry.

Lesson Learned Raising Venture Capital

Raising venture capital is all about the personal chemistry – you want to work with people you like, respect and trust. If you’re lucky enough to find those people, then you should do what you need to make the deal happen.

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David Politis is the founder and CEO of BetterCloud, the leading provider of cloud management and security tools for Google Apps. David is a native of New York City and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Emory University. A version of this post originally appeared on the author’s blog.