This article about Pandora in today's Oakland Tribune adds a little color to Tim Westergren's recent article in VentureBeat.
"At our worst moment, we were being evicted from our office, sued by four employees for back pay," Westergren said. "We owed almost $1.5 million in back salaries. We were living on credit cards: I was making plans to go to Mexico."
Instead, he went on the road — meeting potential investors, making constant pitches.
When it was over, the cash was in hand. He said he went back and counted how many times he spoke to investors in four lean years.
"I just kind of kept going. We had survived the bust when no one else had and we had built a pretty significant data base," he said.
Finally, Larry Marcus, managing director of Walden Venture Capital of San Francisco, got on board, followed by Labrador Ventures of Palo Alto.
Funding finally came on his 348th pitch, Westergren said.
