The Pursuit of Scrappiness #36 James Berdigans 🇱🇻 (Printify) on record Series A, conquering the US, making connections that enable life-changing opportunities & impressing investors with scrappiness
James Berdigans is the CEO and Co-founder of Printify - a print-on-demand platform that helps you create and sell custom products. An alumnus of 500 startups and one of the leaders of the Latvian startup community, Printify just raised a whopping 45mUSD series A round to build on their growth in the US and expand in other markets.
In this episode, we talk about the origins of Printify and the rise of the on-demand printing industry as well as starting a business in the US from Latvia. James also shares his scrappy stories of partnering with Shopify, meeting his co-founders, and getting into 500 startups. Finally, we discuss the Silicon Valley investor community and the timing of your series A round.
The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps
[01:50] - THE ORIGINS OF PRINTIFY
- Building on previous venture successes and failures
- Learning from painful mistakes
- What does Printify do
[05:20] - WHY ON-DEMAND PRINTING INDUSTRY IS HOT
- Democratization of content creation and product design
[07:15] - ON STARTING A COMPANY ON THE US MARKET FROM LATVIA
- The attractiveness of the US market
- Benefits of building a US company from Latvia
- Running a lean and efficient digital sales organization
- Supporting sales with content marketing
- Finding one channel to acquire customers without a budget
[12:40] -STORY HOW JAMES PITCHED TO SHOPIFY
- Hustle in Canada leads to a fruitful partnership
[16:45] - ON GETTING ACCESS TO THE SILICON VALLEY INVESTOR COMMUNITY
- Using 3F’s to kickstart the company
- Raising your first investment from your accountant!
- Getting into 500 startups
- Finding your investor-champion
[22:10] ON BEING BE SCRAPPY & EARNING YOUR LUCK
- Be scrappy! Doing more with less capital
- Story of meeting co-founders
- Definition of luck
- You will get a lot of ‘No’s. but you only need one ‘Yes’
- Bonus: story how Pursuit of Scrappiness got its name
[30:20] - ON TIMING YOUR SERIES A
- Marshmallow test for founders - are companies raising too much too early?
- Having Richard Branson and Will Smith among investors
- How to select the right investors
[36:40] - ON ANGEL INVESTING
- A busy Founder/CEO must have priorities straight
- Angel investors will introduce you to their network
To reach out to James use:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/berdigans/
Website: https://printify.com
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/