COVID nearly bankrupted him. Then with AI he grew from $0 to $25M ARR in 4 years. | Andrew Lockhead, Founder of Stay22

His travel startup crashed 90% overnight. Here’s how he used AI to grow past $2M/year—to $2M a month:

For a while, Andrew was crushing it. Accelerator -> $750K pre-seed -> $2M ARR -> $2.5M seed round. Then COVID hit. 

He was selling to events like CES, SXSW, etc.  Revenue dropped from $160K/month to under $10K... overnight. Investors from his seed round refuse to wire funds. 

After nearly going bankrupt, he finds a way to pivot. A year later, his business takes off.

2020 - $0
2021 - $1M
2022 - $5M
2023 - $15M
Now - $24M.

-  Andrew shares a technique to land early customers. He offered to PAY his customers to use the product.  
- Learn how to deal with massive swings in revenue and unpredicted events. Early-stage founders are always one deal, one employee, one fundraise away from success... or failure.
- Learn why you "can never celebrate until the money is in the bank"

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:16) The Start of Stay22
(00:07:15) The Seed Round
(00:11:53) Pivoting the go to Market
(00:19:38) Investors Pulling out Due to Covid
(00:26:56) Finding the Opportunity in the Pandemic
(00:31:31) Tapping into the Blogger Market
(00:37:31) Growing Back from Zero
(00:38:49) Finding True Product Market Fit
(00:39:35) One Piece of Advice