Connecting Rosotics With $500k | Seedscout Case Study

Rosotics is one of the most ambitious moonshots in Arizona. In this post, I outline how I met the team and, through Seedscout, connected them with $500,000 

I first heard about Rosotics through ASU Venture Devils, which is a local startup league for college students and community members. I remember reading they were aiming to build a new way to 3D print massive structures and that had my interest immediately. Although I didn’t 100% understand what they were doing at that point, I could tell by the website that this wasn’t aiming to be some small company with a modest exit. They were going big and I wanted to meet them. Naturally, I invited the founder/CEO onto my podcast, Christian LaRosa, to learn more. You can find the finished episode here

The conversation was so electric, I offered my help with anything he needed. Christian mentioned he needed some introductions. Good thing Seedscout was up and running at this point. We met again to talk capital…at none other than Chompies.

We ended up meeting at Chompies in Tempe, with Christian and one of his team members. It was only after this meeting that I fully realized his vision. He’s ultimately aiming to build portable 3d printing drones that can print massive structures, starting with rockets. At first, he came off as crazy. But the more time I spent with him, the more clearly I understood the idea. He isn’t crazy, he’s a visionary.

Historically, a 3D printer needed to be as large as the object it was printing in order for it to operate, but by changing the idea of what a printer could look like, there is no limit to how large a printed structure could be. Once I got wind of this being the plan at Chompies, I wanted to help make it a reality and started mapping out my investor connections that I could send an intro request to right then and there.

On February 9th of 2022 I had him send me a forwardable intro email that I was going to send off to some VCs in my network

Most notably, one of the first investors to take an intro was Dave Goldblatt, GP at Vibe Capital, who is also an investor in Seedscout.

We spent a lot of time making intros requests for Christian in the months to come and quite a few of them spent time with Christian to learn more about his vision, yet still passed. For some, they didn’t think he was capable of building it. For others, they couldn’t wrap their head around the vision.

With that said, in late April and May time frame, there were a few investors that took a serious look at Rosotics as an investment. At times, I got texts or calls from Christian helping him understand the fundamentals of SAFEs or how to negotiate with investors

This is one of the benefits of helping local founders. When someone needs help, they may only be a few minutes away so we can jam out about it in person.

Through the negotiation process, Christian eventually pulled through and got two checks from our ecosystem. One being Dave Goldblatt, who put in $200k. Another investor put it $300k who was an intro that came from Eric Ries, Seedscout’s first investor. 12 months ago, Christian had no Bay Area area investors but after going through the Seedscout process, he was able to raise half a million dollars through our network.

The Moral of The Story

If you’re following along, you can tell that Seedscout didn’t close these deals for Christian. In fact, he had to figure a lot of this out on his own. He surely made mistakes in the process too. But isn’t this what life is all about? So many companies claim that they will raise the capital for them, but this isn’t how it works. The founders are the ones doing the work. We are nearly open the doors for them and help them walk through.

When you sign up for Seedscout, you’re the one doing the work. You’re the one making the mistakes. And you’re the one who gets the upside when you figure it out. We are here to open the door, you decide how fast you want to run. Learn more about us here.