Post by EWOR

Ravi just signed a $5M contract with the US government and won Gold at the Edison Awards. What you don't see is what it took to get there. Jobless and bootstrapped, Ravi was cold-calling hundreds of driving schools and getting nowhere. Then a SEK 3M grant landed on his desk. Accepting it would have permanently blocked him from selling to his most important future customers. He said no despite being out of money. It turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made in hindsight. Months later, while visiting his sister in the US, he drove three hours to DMV headquarters in Richmond, Virgina, for a meeting that got rescheduled ten minutes before he arrived. He walked in anyway and waited 6 hours in the car park until they could fit him in. That 30-minute meeting became a $300,000 pilot, a 2-year partnership, a $5M contract, and 27 states in the pipeline. Ravi tells the full story to Petter in the latest episode of Been There, Done That – EWOR's new podcast series dedicated to the raw, unfiltered founder stories that never make it to LinkedIn. Link in comments. #EWOR #BeenThereDoneThat #B2G #startups #entrepreneurship

Video Content