The Pursuit of Scrappiness #33 Henrikas Urbonas 🇱🇹 (Interactio) on scaling 12x, raising largest Series A in Baltics, interpreting meetings for world’s leaders and making yourself attractive to investors
Henrikas Urbonas is the CEO and Co-founder of Interactio - your ultimate multilingual meetings solution. Interactio announced a record-setting 30mUSD series A round on the back of explosive growth during the pandemic and being the interpretation platform for such global organizations as the UN, the EU, Microsoft, Google, and many many other global governments and corporate brands.
In this episode, we discuss the seven years old “overnight success” of Interaction, its mission, and product. We discuss challenges in explosive scaling and doing business with global public sector organizations. Henrikas also shares his lessons and findings from their massive round fundraising process.
The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps
[02:20] - INTRODUCTION
[06:00] - ON INTERACTIO MISSION, PRODUCT AND BUSINESS MODEL
- The product pivot journey
- Solving tough technological challenges
- Finding product-market fit
- The mission of Interactio
- The product and business model of Interactio
- Doing business with the biggest international organizations (EU, UN, etc.)
- Leveraging an unconventional sales network for B2B - the church
[34:00] - ON EXPLOSIVE SCALING
- Prioritization of business development opportunities
- Escalation of the company development due to the pandemic
- Scaling challenges during the pandemic
- Lessons from mistakes made during explosive growth
- Hiring the right team
[48:00] - ON SERIES A FUNDRAISING
- Planning the Series A fundraise
- Funding the pandemic growth from revenue
- Key elements that helped convince the investors
- Choosing the right investors to speak to
- Creating investor FOMO
- Hiring dedicated fundraising team for Series A raising
- Challenging the investors if they are a good fit
- Importance of mentors and peers
- Maintaining investor relationships throughout different stages in the company
- The outlook for Interactio and the live interpretation industry
To reach out to Henrikas use:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrikasurbonas/
Website: https://www.interactio.io/
Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/
Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/
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Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/