From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You were almost like a solo entrepreneur with your brother helping you out.

Daniel Scandian: Yes. My brother took care of the company while I looked for investors. Then I had to talk to some investors in Brazil. In 10 months, I had a very nice investor from Brazil and from Argentina. I was also lucky to get help from Boston. Both the CEO and Founder of the two biggest companies that were in home improvement came in. In the middle of 2012, we got $4 million investment.

Sramana Mitra: All these investors were willing to invest at that point even though it was just you, as a solo entrepreneur, with your brother, and you had a significant amount of revenue. That was the draw. You had proved the model.

Daniel Scandian: Yes. What I heard after they invested is that the company was not there on paper. We made a real, big effort to make this happen. Then we realized later that those two companies were doing the same thing with us and they were very big companies. In the beginning, there was no cash required, because we had no inventory. That matched with the same strategy for those two companies in the US. That was the reason they understood that this might be a good investment opportunity. At the same time, we invited Wayfair to advise us and angels to Madeira. At the same time, three venture capitalists invested in the same Series A.

Sramana Mitra: When did you finish raising this round? Was it the beginning or end of 2012?

Daniel Scandian: It was mid-2012.

Sramana Mitra: Now you’ve raised $4 million in financing? What was the next strategic move?

Daniel Scandian: The first step was to hire a team of executives to help me grow the company. We worked with third parties for technology and marketing. It was a very confusing time for us because we had no experience with investors. We were trying to do everything they said. We did a lot of mistakes because of that. The idea was good, but the moment was wrong.

Even with the money, we had to build with time. We needed time and we needed to learn. We burned a lot of money. I went to US to visit both companies. I asked them how they did it in a scalable way. To sell my amount was not so complicated, but to sell billions of dollars worth of goods is something else. They showed me the software that they built to manage and do drop-shipping. The workflow was very similar.

This segment is part 3 in the series : From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira
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