At LEAP this week, I found myself thinking about the first “yes.”
In my last venture, we met more than 40 VC and PE firms before receiving the first “yes”. And with that, we eventually raised $6 billion. The truth is that the first $10 million meant more than the last $100 million. Not because of size, but because it came when belief was scarce.
That experience has shaped how we built 3C from day one.
Founders Do Not Build in Straight Lines
The ideal start-up version of the journey is neat:
Seed → Series A → Series B … → IPO exit
The real version is usually:
Ambition → progress → unexpected problem → adaptation → progress again → repeat.
Common Problems We Have Seen
- A tape-out takes longer than planned
- A customer POC slips
- Order cancelled
- A deployment hits an engineering failure
- A hyperscaler launches something similar just as you ship a major release
- The market turns, capital dries up, and suddenly the same company that was “inevitable” six months ago is deemed “too early.”
To us, that is NOT a sign the founder has failed. That is what building something genuinely new looks like.
When the Party Ends
The market is useful, of course, since it provides signals, but it is not a moral judge. When liquidity is abundant, almost every company can raise. The real test of an investor is what they do when the party ends.
- Do they still take the call?
- Do they still make the customer introduction?
- Do they still reserve capital for the difficult middle?
- Do they still believe in the company when the next round is not bigger, faster, or more expensive than the last?
It is easy to call oneself a “long-term capital” on a website, it is much harder to behave like one.
At 3C, our view is simple:
The Difficult Middle
The best companies are often built through the periods that look hardest from the outside. And the investors who matter most are not those who only appear when momentum is obvious. They are the ones willing to show up with the first “yes” when confidence was scarce, stay for the inevitably difficult middle, and long after the applause has faded.
To every founder in the difficult middle: keep building. You are probably closer to the real work than you think.