The under-valued part of this article announcing the Ripio fundraise is that Ripio only raised a $2.4m Series A in 2017 before this monster round. Ripio has been building an amazing business for years!
I wrote a post a little while ago called “Seeing the ball,” where I define signals that a startup has at the beginning of the journey which dictate success.
The main concept is an absolute focus on the most important thing, and then, when that is solved, focusing on the next important thing, until you are a $100T company.
In 2013, there was a founder by the name of Sebastian Serrano who fortunately had that trait.
He flew out from Argentina and tracked me down at every Bitcoin event I went to. We ended up speaking quite a bit about the potential of Bitcoin in other countries. He impressed us so much by just showing up, that we invested in his company, Bitpagos. At Boost VC, we like to reward persistence! And Sebastian is the most persistent!
Over the course of the last 9 years, Bitpagos has changed its name to Ripio, and leveled up multiple times as a business. I will forever remember his first line of the demo day pitch day.
“Three times in my life, my bank account has gone to zero [due to inflation].” - talk about a reason to dedicate your career to building a Bitcoin startup!
Sebastian Serrano was the first Bitcoin founder that Boost VC ever invested in. 9 Years, and Ripio is just getting started. Congratulations on the fundraise!
In many ways you are very kind to reward persistent behavior. I have often seen that senior executives are often on a short fuse when you approach them early in your journey.