Machine‑Friendly Summary

Episode features Jason Kirby interviewing Unit 1 founder/designer Juan García Mansilla about pivoting from a ski/snow helmet with integrated audio to the Faro smart urban cycling helmet during COVID‑19. Kickstarter validated demand; first batches sold out. The company later raised a $3.5M Series A, co‑led by Slingshot Ventures and PONUK, with participation from existing investors and Joint Capital. Key topics: accelerator beginnings (LeAD Sports), supplier development in China, pandemic impact, rapid product development (March→October), investor communication, valuation/dilution, option pool refresh, and strategic VC alignment. Unit 1 now builds an ecosystem (helmets, lights, backpack) to make cycling safer and more appealing.

• Entities: Unit 1, Faro, Jason Kirby, Juan García Mansilla, Slingshot Ventures, PONUK, Joint Capital, LeAD Sports Accelerator, Adidas family
• Themes: design thinking, pivoting, PMF, crowdfunding, investor relations, Series A, urban mobility, safety tech
• Outcomes: Kickstarter success > product‑market fit; $3.5M Series A; expanded product roadmap

Full Transcript

Jason Kirby: Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I'm excited to introduce Juan García Mansilla with us today. He's gonna be the founder of Unit One and I'm super excited to have him bring on the show. One, his product designer background is products are beautiful and we're gonna hear about his story of, you know, pivoting to the product areas today. Yo Juan, thanks for joining the show.

Juan García Mansilla: Jason, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Jason Kirby: Yeah, no, this is awesome. Now, what would be great is if you can just give the audience a little bit of a background on how you became product designer to where you are now, where you've successfully closed a three and a half million dollar Series A. What's that journey been like? And just kind of give us a little bit of that story.

Juan García Mansilla: Sure, I can do the capsule thing. So I started out as a product designer, industrial designer, specifically doing product design back in Argentina, that's where I'm from. I was having the time of my life there, designing all sorts of crazy stuff. And I ended up partnering up with my then boss to kind of build for the first time, instead of designing products for someone else. We just decided to design our own product and build a company around that. So we set out to do that. I partnered up with them very, very soon after. We added our third co-founder, Francisco, who provided a very much needed business background because two designers run a company that can be, I can get tricky. And then with that kind of a balance in place, we set out to design a product, build a product. fund it, at least fund its production, build a brand around it, launch it, build it, sell it, the whole works. We had a pivot in the middle, I'm happy to discuss in a minute, and then long story short, we now find ourselves in the urban mobility space, designing and building safety accessories for all of cycling, with a focus on, a heavy focus on design, and safety through tech. So we use tech to make our products safer and make our riders safer. Ultimately, what we want is to put more butts on bikes and take people away from cars, help them adopt cycling as a lifestyle and push them a little bit of a push from our part to kind of promote this lifestyle altogether, make it safer, make it easier to adopt.

Jason Kirby: Well, I'm excited to have you on the show because as a cyclist and e-skater myself and a worrisome wife who wants me to be safe all the time, I will say you have probably one of the sexiest and safest helmets I've seen on the market and excited to learn how this journey got started. So you kind of gave us a little shortened down version. What I really like to understand is what was that first product before the pivot and what was that story like? Because you raised some money for that.

Juan García Mansilla: Thank you.

Jason Kirby: and then you had to kind of transform the business to what you guys are today. So tell us a little bit about that origin story.

Juan García Mansilla: Yeah, so I'm a lifelong skier. I've always loved the snow. And so our first product kind of came from there. Big fan of listening to music while skiing, big fan of skiing in a group, you know, walkie-talking, one another. So I was a ski instructor in Vail one season and... Classic, you know, aha moment after trying all sorts of different gizmos for actually listening to music or communicating comfortably amongst others here. And I just identified this super concise pain point as is here that was unsolved because I had tried everything from AirPods to audio kits to you freaking name it. So that was a very clear problem that needed to be solved, which is essentially the... perfect input you can give a product designer that's looking for a problem to solve. That's what a product does anyway. So we kind of used that as fuel and it ended up being this unique ski and snowboard helmet with headphones that you could detach for after skiing. And then you have this pretty big and sturdy interface that you can use with gloves on for volume and just... track control and there was walkie talkie amongst friends and all the stuff that we always wanted to have and never could. We put on a product, we designed that, we put it on Itty Go back then because we thought it was a good idea. The campaign was not successful, not even remotely. We still believed that it was a product worth doing. So we pretty much froze those funds. I think it was like... 50k so it's not it's not going to cover the molds even so no we're nearly enough so we froze that money and said okay well never going to get anywhere with that so we um we Literally looked for an accelerator that could take us to the next level take us to a place where we could actually raise around We were lucky to be drafted by the first ever edition of the lead sports accelerator in berlin

Juan García Mansilla (cont.): founded by the family of the Adidas grandchildren, Adidas' grandchildren. So the Adidas family was behind this thing. It was sports oriented, hence they're taking us. And so from there, we ended up raising our first round to go and build this thing. Only then we released the funds for the campaign. We told them, hey, so this is gonna take a while longer because we ended up having to... fund this elsewhere. And we actually offered refunds to everyone. It's like, hey, do you still want to wait for it or do you want your money back? Because we hadn't used it. And thankfully everyone said, okay, I'll wait. So we ended up using it. And we did the works. We went to China to build suppliers from scratch. Very scary moment, but also memorable in a ton of ways. Lots of fun stories there. scary moments too. But then yeah, we built our supplier network from scratch. We built that product. We manufactured it. We started selling it to some success. We sold out one season, a small batch, and we sold another season. We sold out again, smaller batches. And we were kind of starting to ramp up, starting, we started identifying some issues in the product that we wanted to solve to, you know, take it to the next level. probably a gen two or something. And then all ski resorts in the world closed overnight. And we have one product, seasonal, that we couldn't sell for the foreseeable future. We had about 500K in the account intended to make more of these helmets. And we said, this is too risky. It's like, we're gonna, we could very well die. on top of a pile of helmets that we can't sell. So we told our investors, we need to pump the brakes and we need to figure out a way to navigate this that ends up in a different place. Cause remember, I mean, picture early days of pandemic, knowledge was scarce, everyone's scared. No one knew what exactly was gonna happen. And all we knew was that every resort was closed. and we couldn't sell our single product. That's more than enough to kill any startup, basically.

Jason Kirby: Thanks for watching!

Juan García Mansilla: and we couldn't sell our single product. That's more than enough to kill any startup, basically.

Jason Kirby: out. That is quite the journey. There's a couple of things I want to kind of point out here that I think are interesting about this journey that you've been through. First identifying kind of a personal pain point and kind of building on from that point, bringing together people around you, people that you trust and kind of solve certain gaps in the business. And then eventually getting a product. to market, dealing with the challenges. Maybe the Indiegogo is gonna be a home run, that's all I ever need, but in reality, it necessarily wasn't. But wise enough to go out, find the right type of investor. You're not necessarily pitching VCs to this stage. You're finding an accelerator that knows they're betting early and you found perfect alignment in terms of the Adidas accelerator. And so it sounds like you had an incredible learning journey to get to this point.

Juan García Mansilla: Yeah.

Juan García Mansilla: No, it wouldn't.

Jason Kirby: And then the world just kind of kicked you in the face. And you quickly reacted to that as opposed to being like, oh, everything's gonna be fine. Which, you know, we look back three years now and it's like, oh, it wasn't, you know, we all survived. Well, not everyone, but I guess. You know, when we look at the scenario of the decisions that you made and giving you the opportunity to like, hey, we still have some cash, what can we do with this? Let's not pile up in more inventory when we don't know what the future is. You got to hold out for at least a year, just kind of given the market climb. Maybe you could sell down to South America, the southern hemisphere for that market.

Juan García Mansilla: It ended up being even more than that. It ended up being almost two seasons. I mean, Northern Hemisphere, I'm not talking North-South-North-South, but two Northern Hemisphere seasons. It would have killed us, I can tell you now.

Jason Kirby: Yeah, easily. And what are you gonna do? You just sit on your hand. Like you can't, you know, so you made a smart decision. You basically communicated to your investors, which is another point I wanna point out to our listeners of like, you're not doing this in a silo. A lot of people bottle this up, get scared, don't know what to do. And, but it sounds like you took the right step. You communicated to your shareholders and, you know, stakeholders. And let's continue. So obviously since then, you've had some success. It's been a couple of years since that point. You have a new product in the market. You've had some Kickstarters. So let's talk about this new journey of discovering post-pivot.

Juan García Mansilla: Yeah, sure. So we took that half a million we had reserved for more inventory and we set it out for designing and developing a new product in a new space that was going to use some of the supplier network that we had built, some of the knowledge that we had accrued. Otherwise, it was going to be a hard reset. Like we kept the brand, we kept most of our suppliers, we kept a lot of stuff, shareholders, team, you name it. We kept all that we could and we were trying to be as smart as we possibly could in terms of where to go. And we had originally envisioned to go into the urban space at some point, but we just brought it up way in advance. And we said, OK, it's not going to be an additional space. We're going to make a full switch. Is it going to be snow? No more. Hello, urban mobility. It was a hard call. I can't claim credit for it. This originated in Francisco, my co-founder. And it was a hard sell even for me. Like I was in love with the snow. It was, I was a, you know, lifelong scare. I had built this from the heart, from that special place. And it was just ripping me out of there. It was painful. And I wasn't even a cyclist back then. So I had, you know, as a designer, I didn't have nowhere. anywhere near close as a strong link as I had with the snow. It was very hard for me to be feel empathy or a relationship to this new world that we were getting into because I wasn't part of it yet. So I was the first one that needed convincing actually before even talking to the investors. Once we were all us three, three founders were on board. We told the investors, Hey, we got to make this, this move. It's going to be urban mobility. It's going to have It's gonna be a helmet, yes. There's gonna be some tech in it as we had on the snow helmet before. That's all we can tell you. I cannot give you more because we don't have more. And they were somewhat receptive to the idea. Some of them asked like a bike helmet, like really? We didn't get into unit one for biking. Certainly they didn't. We weren't either, but, and they asked. what is it going to have? And like, no clue, just trust us that we will make something that is cool, that solves an actual problem. Same as before, same process only in a different space. So they trusted us and we charged on. And in the middle of the pandemic, we designed and developed Fireo, which was a challenge in itself because it was Zoom calls. It was the new reality very early on. which for product development can get tricky. So we learned how to do that. We designed Faro, we launched it on Kickstarter and we sold more Faro in two weeks that we sold the snow helmet in two seasons. And at that point, everyone was on board like, you go ahead now, you're good to go. And like, okay, this is clearly the reception that we intended and it just blew, blew apart. It was just so well received. and we never looked back.

Jason Kirby: And one, like, I guess what was that timeline from like, the world's burning, you know, everything, you know, COVID's taken over the world, and now you have proven this new product, this pivot has worked.

Juan García Mansilla: March to October.

Jason Kirby: That's not bad. Okay, not bad. To conceptualize a whole new product initiative and generate revenue, substantially more revenue than your previous endeavors is an incredible feat. And I personally, I've seen this happen and I also went through the pandemic. Pandemic forced a lot of businesses to like figure their stuff out very, very quickly. And it sounds like you guys came out on the other side. And so from the journey to, you know, All right, sales are working, investors are behind you now, you're growing revenue. Where are you guys at now? You just recently closed your Series A. Kind of get us caught up to this point in terms of where you guys are at on the capital side of the business.

Juan García Mansilla: Yeah, sure. So we launched Faro into the market after the Kickstarter. We went ahead and built the thing, manufactured it, started, we put out our first batch, we sold out, we put out our second batch, sold out as well. Revenue started growing and we finally checked all the boxes that we needed for Cirrus A. Essentially, we're us solidifying the, actually the landing on this new space. our chief tip of the spear product, finding product market fit was also a big one. We needed a big check that we needed. And then the team started growing around this and we were at a point where we said, okay, this is solid enough to build upon, solid enough that we have figured out the main. aspects of this business and we're in a position that is solid enough to grow it. That was originally going to happen this year. So it was going to happen late 2023. We had, because the world was in a bit of turmoil, the war, Ukraine, it was a tricky year to fundraise 2022. And we said, uh-uh. So... This is not the moment to open our series A. Let's just postpone it to late 2023. That was the play. And we were good in that play. But, and you will find, for good or worse, that our series A round was not the way it's supposed to happen, or the way it usually happens. It was a bit of a good surprise in that sense, because we were, you know, gearing up for the hardest race. at the most challenging moment, but it ended up being, I'm not gonna say smooth sailing, because that's bullshit, it doesn't exist. But it ended up being less terrible than we imagined. Probably we were lucky, but timing-wise, it ended up being just the right place and the right time kind of thing. So we weren't raising, Fire was doing really well, we were launching new products, always through Kickstarter. We used that. not right now, not because we need it, but because it's a great validation channel and it's a sales channel in which you can sell a product eight, nine months before it sees a light of day. No other channel lets you do that. So we kind of use that. It's a great sounding board from way, way before hitting market. We usually make a lot of tweaks. This is a very tough demographic. So if you please those guys, you're probably going to be okay in the market. So we were launching new products around Faro. We were building this ecosystem of safety accessories to connect to each other and kind of build up your safety from multiple angles. That was doing well. We decided to postpone the round because number one, we could. And number two, it was 2020 was not the right year to race. We all knew that. So we got introduced to a VC.

Jason Kirby: awful.

Juan García Mansilla: from one of our old investors, one of the guys who had seen through the entire snow pivot urban stage. So we kind of, we had a relationship with these guys at this point. And they're like the rich uncles that you love and they have supported you from very, very early on. So we love these guys at this point. And so we got introduced to Avicii right. Right after we moved to Spain, oh that too, it was like we knew that we couldn't run this from Argentina pretty early on. So we knew that we wanted to be closer to our markets, closer to our markets, closer to our capital. So that was either Europe or the States. We operate in both markets equally strongly. We ended up here in Madrid setting up our HQ whilst our product design and software teams. remain in Argentina. We have our HQ here for all stuff that is strategic, commercial, high level content too happens here. And then of course, China for manufacturing. But I'm derailing. So we weren't going to race and we got this introduction at the worst moment. It's like, I'm getting introduced to a very, you know, a nice match of a VC at the worst moment. We weren't nearly close to opening around, but we obviously took the call anyways. I mean, what you're going to do, you don't say no to these guys. So we took the call. It was, the fund was, the VC was Slingshot, Slingshot Ventures, a Netherlands-based consumer product oriented VC. Perfect for us. They have this really cool mantra that their LPs are exited founders. So they have this. like this nice full circle kind of a thing. And I think it's a more empathic approach than most VCs because of that. We had a couple of chats. They loved what we were doing. We loved their approach, but it was like, hey guys, listen, we're not raising right now. We're not gonna be raising for at least a year. Let's just keep in touch. So what we did, and I think this proved probably the- the genius move, we didn't know it was a move back then. We just sent them investor reports, kept them in check, you know, send them updates almost monthly, sometimes even more. And pretty much, I mean, they were seeing us work without investing. And they, you know, eventually started seeing that our promises eventually materialized, that we were in full ship, that we were hard Their boxes were checked internally, because we don't know. And at one point, they said, they called us up, and they said, late 2022, again, we weren't raising, they said, open the round. I was like, okay, but you know, this is still a sucky time for fundraising, remember? I mean, we have to fill the thing. Whether or not you come in, we still have to fill the whole thing. It's supposed to be more than three million. It's... You know, it's a big round to fill, at least for us. They said, open the round. So we got into that and they were masterminding and play that we didn't see back then. They brought in another co-investor to lead the round, PONUK. PONUK happens to be the VC arm of the PON family. The PON family, the PON group. owns, well they're super diversified, they're this huge Netherlands based group, they have, this is in the automotive energy sectors, but they own half of the bike brands you know. Like I think they're 20 something. So for an accessory company for cycling to have pawn indirectly in your cap table is just, just you know. dream is, yeah, it was a big deal. It's like, okay, this is a strategic that is coming in. This changes things. And they were co-leading the round with Slingshot. They didn't fill up the whole thing. But we also had existing investors that had Pro Rata's coming in, a convertible that was open. And then they also brought in a smaller VC fund, also super interesting approach, joint capital. the wealth, the investments I should say, of retired athletes that they're, you know, they've done well in their careers. Most of them retire early as far as age is concerned. Like some of them are like, you know, 30 and they're retired, it's super young and super active and what am I gonna do with all this money, right? So they kind of teach them to invest. It's a pretty cool ecosystem they have. So they got in there as well. And between all of them, yeah, it was 3.5 million.

Jason Kirby: So there's a lot to share and highlight on this point from basically focusing heads down on a business that went through a pretty tragic pivot, not tragic, but like, you know, complicated, difficult pivot and putting your head down and just focusing on product market fit, like building the best product you can for what ended up being probably a much larger audience, more lucrative audience potentially than, you know, just the snow audience.

Juan García Mansilla: Heh, yeah.

Jason Kirby: And something I like to call out, because you said that the round went smoother and easier, and I'm sure there's some hidden details that come up. It's never always perfect when raising a round, but basically the VC came to you and set everything up and got things going. This is like a dream case. This is like, oh, wouldn't that be nice, as many founders might be listening, kind of saying. But you did a lot of things right. You took meetings early, before you were raising. you established rapport and relationship over an extended period of time, but the most important piece is you shared updates saying you were gonna do X and you did X. You know, like you say you're gonna do one thing and then you actually do it. And that's probably one of the most powerful ways to build trust with a VC and a relationship over time. That founders just, not all, but like, you know, a lot of founders really struggle with this concept of. They think that I want money now, I'm gonna start talking to VCs, and what they don't realize is no, you need to be building these relationships months and months in advance, if not maybe a year or two in advance, before you actually open the round, because they just need to build trust with you. They need to see what you've been up to, they need to see you hit on deliverables, and they need to be able to believe in you. And that's what you guys executed on, and that's phenomenal, and you should definitely pat yourself on the back along with your team. So when it came to this, you kind of...

Juan García Mansilla: Thank you.

Jason Kirby: uh... the cats in this case the other bcs got hurted for you uh... and it you would came to kind of negotiating terms you're giving it was not is a very different market from you know twenty one and twenty uh... how did you guys feel about the negotiation the terms uh... and just how things kinda came out for you on the other side uh... and kind of where is it enable you to go now uh... as a company

Juan García Mansilla: So it was, they were, I gotta say, you know, you always picture, so this was our first institutional round. Before that, we only dealt with family offices, very wealthy private investors, the accelerator, which has its fun, but it's different, right? None of them were a proper institutional VC. So you kind of build up this scary image of VCs over time. And I was... I was not happy about that part going in. So that's what we expected, right? That the big, bad, hairy wolf coming, you know, stomping at your door, demanding crazy stuff from you. And to be honest, what we ended up receiving was, don't take me wrong, very diligent investors. They were thorough. Due diligence was borderline traumatic. on the founding team and some of the senior staff. We didn't sleep for like six days. I think we, not that I recommend it, but it always ends up happening. I think we slept like six hours over, I don't know, four days, it was not good. But we did it. I mean, I think it was part of the deal. It's like they asked for a lot of things very shortly, like without a lot of lead time. because if you don't have it, you can't fake it. That's my take. I haven't asked them yet, actually. It's like, did you do this on purpose? Like, did you only give me four days because you knew that I couldn't make it up? So they gave us four days to pull all this huge list together before they came in. And they did this massive due diligence. There was all day long, I think it was a seven hours worth of meeting. where they lifted every single rock there was to lift. And they were very, very diligent. But when it came to answer your question, when it came to the terms, the negotiation of the terms, they were, of course they were harsh. I mean, they were leading the round with major strategic kind of a dream couple, if you will, consumer goods oriented VC, backed by... fellow Exit founders and the VC arm of the world's largest cycling player. It's like, you know, where do I sign? But then again, you can't just say yes to anything. We have an existing valuation. We have existence, your holders, we have metrics. We have unfortunately, we had a large number, larger number of rounds prior to series A because of the pivot. So we didn't, you know, this we didn't just. start out from scratch, you know, new company, new cap table, new shareholders, we maintained everything out of trust, out of gratitude, I think, to our investors that, you know, they saw us through the hard tumbles and that it was just only right to continue, you know, using the same vehicle, even if it meant more dilution to us and, you know, more, let's say butchered cap table. We still maintained it. So it was hardly a classic series A stage company because we had more rounds prior. We had more dilution than normal. We had a pivot in the middle. We had a solid number of shareholders, which isn't necessarily a good thing when you're coming into series A, like too large of a cap table. So we had all these things. Plus it was a shitty time to raise, right? 2022. But then again, it was them that told us to open around at a shitty moment, nonetheless. But so it was this kind of, you know, to and fro that was going on. And yeah, of course, they were harsh, but they were also fair. And they didn't ask for anything that we didn't have in place before, almost. And at that point, we were thankfully pretty well versed in terms of, you know. corporate governance, board mechanics, liquidation preferences, undiluted mechanics, the whole work. So it was kind of smooth sailing from that end because they didn't ask for anything crazy. And I think at one point they also were, this is me thinking out loud, but they were also considering their relationship with our existence shareholders. It's like, if you come in, you know, kick the table, kick the board out, and you say, these are the terms now, then you might be able to pull it out to pull it off, but probably everyone's gonna hate you for it. You don't want that to be your first step, I think, in a potential future collaboration that is gonna last years. So I think they also concerned themselves with... starting on the right foot with the shareholders, as well as the talented team. So they conducted themselves really, really well in this scenario. And it didn't end up being the big, big bad hairy wolf we all pictured going into this. Which again, it's not to say they weren't harsh, they weren't diligent, they were. But they were just, you know, also logical and common sensed, which is a lot these days.

Jason Kirby: No, and that's great to hear in terms of that story. And, you know, like, you know, diligence can be tough and it's kind of expected these days from VCs, you know, the days of kind of like throwing term sheets without seeing anything is gone. Thankfully, I think the world is a better place because of it. But I also want to highlight the fact that, you know, the integrity you guys maintain during your downtime when you could have easily shut down that company and started a new one and start fresh and kind of capture more equity for yourself, you know. easier said than done, but not easy in my eyes and probably not yours either in terms of the reputation that comes with that and kind of the negative. Yeah, exactly. And these people supported you. Yeah, and that's something that probably also another checkbox for this VC, Slingshot and the other VCs that came in later of like, look at how they acted in the standup integrity they had in this most difficult, controversial point of the business. and how they treated their investors then, it's a positive sign that you'll treat your investors properly down the road as well. So they didn't wanna come in and be unfair to you as well. So you're setting the precedent. And every single, and that's something the founder should know is like, every term sheet you sign, every investor you come in, whatever the terms are now, you're setting the precedent for what will come down the road. And the more egregious terms today are gonna be either equal and or more egregious down the road. And this investor is probably maybe assuming that you'll need additional capital down the road, maybe from bigger investors. They don't wanna come in with excessive terms that will come back to bite them down the road. Cause whoever comes new and top always gets the priority. So appreciate you sharing that story and those insights as you kind of went through that journey. And when it came to, it sounds like mostly existing investors and the new investors that came in were kind of like, hurted altogether from existing investors mostly. But you haven't really talked about how you got all those investors, the original investors to the table in terms of how you got in front of them, how you discovered them and got them to invest. And so I want you to touch on that. Another question I wanna kind of bring up in a moment is given the dilution that you experienced on the founder's side and team's side, like how did you guys manage that moving forward? So. Let's go to the first question. What was your strategy to getting those early stage investors to kind of believe in you and find them and get in front of them?

Juan García Mansilla: So what got us our foot at the door really was the lead accelerator. I've been very critical of them in a lot of ways as far as the program goes. But as far as the opportunities they afforded us, we closed our first round because of them. They filled in at that point. It was 600,000 seed round. and they filled most of it. And then it was up to us to, I think this was on purpose. Like they put in 400 and said, okay, now you go get the 200 remain. Proof to me that you can do this. Sounds fair. We ended up going to anyone that was close to us that could help, friends and family at that point were in that relevant because the amounts were so high. So we ended up pulling some wealthy private investors together into a decent ticket and then into I think it was a 100k or 200k and then we had another guy come in with 60 and we ended up over subscribing. I think it was 700 but it was like this big 400,000 check and then smaller spread across tickets.

Jason Kirby: How did you get the smaller guys? You kind of mentioned they were, you know, high-neighborhood individuals, but how did you get in front of them? If it wasn't friends and family, you know, who were the...

Juan García Mansilla: Well, it was, we got them through, friends and family, it was always warm intros, and we were very diligent with our decks, our numbers, and of course we had the Adidas family leading the round, which was something already. But at that point, there wasn't a complete stranger on board besides the lead accelerators group. It wasn't actually the lead, it was... Leeds shareholders amongst them we had a couple individuals that resonated with our mission the hardest and they were the ones who put in the ticket. So it wasn't everyone inside Leeds, it was mostly Harold Premat, Swiss guy, ex racing driver, super fun guy, and Paul Caicedo, Colombian family office type investor, both of whom we are of course really, really close to. by this time. I know their families, they know ours. We've met a hundred times. So it wasn't really strangers at that point. Then we started being connected through them. So the first strangers we brought into following rounds were a family office that was an acquaintance of one of our guys. It was always warm intros. But one thing we did do every single time is whenever we had an intro, it was like Armageddon. It was full preparation. Like we went in hard. That is what no question could go unanswered. No number could be unclear. We had to know our bits front to back. And we were very, we set a really high bar on our, as far as our decks, our presentation materials, our numbers, our charts, our spec sheets, our math. Everything was very, very clear from the get go. Managing cap tables throughout the process. Also a very useful and unexpected skill because a lot of these guys are very active and they kind of, they wanna keep a certain amount of equity in your business. And if you provide constant updating of that number over the years, they're gonna help out. They're gonna be active and we were lucky enough. to get people in that every single time we raced, and we probably raced too many times too often, out of, you know, it was an attempt to reduce risk on the investor side, but it was a mistake too, because it really hurt the cap table to race so many times without dramatic value increases between rounds. That's a learning we take home from that period.

Jason Kirby: Were you guys using like convertible nodes or saves in between kind of these larger rounds and consolidating them together? Like was that the makeup of them?

Juan García Mansilla: We did, at one point we did, but a lot of these guys are like, you know, traditional-minded people, not used to venture capital type investments, not super experienced angel investors either. So the language that they understood was a price round. It's like, I give you X money, you give me X equity, let's go, full value alignment. Don't, you know, don't talk to me about caps, discounts, you know, timeout periods, anything. So we ended up doing that, taking that road, which also was hurtful in the long run. And so too many rounds, too close together, without big valuation jumps is clearly not the way to go. But one thing we did build over time with these guys was a relationship. I mean, they saw us bust our asses night and day. They saw us promise, they saw us deliver. They saw us go to China. These were hard promises that we were fulfilling. So I think they took that to heart. And every single time we had a need for capital, they chipped in. Every single one of them, every single time. That is until a series A came, which was bigger money and bigger tickets. And I think that most of them said, I've done my job. I've got them this far. Now it's time for someone else to take the gig.

Jason Kirby: To be honest, what you experience is what a lot of companies are dealing with right now. These rolling saves or these consistent rounds of small checks, small rounds coming in to keep the business to the point where you still have the opportunity to win. As much as it's nice to get the full lump sum all at once, the reality is it's hard. Certain metrics have to be in. It's a whole process to do a... proper equity round. So what you experience is not unusual. And I'm kind of glad you shared that just so people aren't looking at this. You know, you guys is, oh, you just got all your investors handed to you on a silver platter. It doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds like you had quite the struggle and journey to kind of get to the point where you had this opportunity. But as a last question before, you know, kind of to wrap up, I do want to talk about, you know, given all those rounds, you know, the dilution between three founders, it must have been pretty substantial. What have you guys done? How's been like the morale in that aspect? Cause you know, taking that type of dilution where there are additional option pools granted to you to kind of, you know, give you additional vesting options. Like just kind of walk through that kind of process. So just kind of share some insights to founders that might have gone through it or might be going through it.

Juan García Mansilla: Yeah, so that of course was the chief downside to multiple rounds and too many rounds too often and the cap table got hurt that way. But again, because we were dealing with people that were in it from the start that had established a relationship, a trusting relationship at this point, they also saw that. And before series A got even open. We liquidated the option pool that we had in place. We just allocated all those points to the founding team and some senior staff. And then rehashed it. It's like we gave them all away and then built a new one prior to the round even opening, which was, of course, dilutive to everyone, mind you. But it was a way to refill some of that equity that was lost along the way and put us in a position that was more consistent of an accustomed zero-sale prerequisite. Wasn't even there, I mean, but it was closer at least. And then the VCs that came in, again, also speaks to their integrity as VCs, and also speaks to the kind of relationship that they wanna have with us founders. They also acknowledged this, and they actually, which was a complete surprise to me, and it- I'm not sure if it's even common market practice at this point, but they allocated an extra point, an extra couple of points to be added onto the pool after the fact, after the round, to kind of soften the blow dilution-wise specifically for us founders. Also another good sign that you're getting in bed with the right people.

Jason Kirby: Mm-hmm.

Juan García Mansilla: And people always joke and you hear these cliches thrown around that, you know, investors like it's like a spouse of sorts. It kind of is in a way that I think a founder is like more of a spouse. Like I see I see my co-founders every single day. They're like brothers to me at this point. But that doesn't mean an investor is not a long committed relationship that it's hard to get out of. And it is. And you know. To me, stuff like that matters because it says a lot. It says that you're getting on a boat with the right kind of people, and they have a similar kind of mind and reasoning, and they're common sense, and they're also compassionate when they very well could not be. No one asked them for this. They volunteered it. No one asked them to respect most of the standing turns we have with our investors. They did. So I think that... Maybe I got this, we were super lucky in terms of what VCs we got. But the two that we have on board, the two we have on board is, or three I should say, are super reasonable, more so than I ever imagined. And I'm grateful for that. I'm not sure how representative of reality this is or how useful it's going to be for other founders. Maybe. everyone else, you know, it's the demon that we have for seeing. I don't know.

Jason Kirby: No, it is actually, I wouldn't say it's the most common thing, but when you have multiple diluted rounds, smart VCs know that adding an option to pull post-close or kind of post-money is the right gesture because they're sacrificing a pretty insignificant amount on their side, but it's a major impact to the founders to kind of motivate them. And it's a negotiation chip for founders too if it doesn't come up in the discussion. a two-way conversation. You don't have to accept every term given to you. And it just sounds like you were fortunate enough to have some amazing VCs join your team and join your cap table and understanding that it's a long-term game and properly incentivizing you. So I'm glad you shared that just because that is something a lot of founders face. I've heard some really horror stories that were awful and... I've experienced both positive and negative outcomes in these situations in my own businesses. So I appreciate you sharing these insights. This has been an incredible time listening to your journey and your story of just globally distributed team that's servicing multiple different markets and having multiple different raises, two lives essentially as a company. So it's been a fascinating story. Honestly, it's a more common story in my mind of what I've experienced amongst our community and network. It's like the very small percentage of companies that are just like perfect straight up into the right and in reality, it can be a very bumpy ride and you guys are getting that chance to kind of continue on your journeys with the right partners on your side. So really appreciate you having me on the show. For the cyclists, the boarders, the e-skaters out here that are listening today, where can they learn about your products and learn more about you?

Juan García Mansilla: It was.

Juan García Mansilla: Sure, so you can always find where we're up to at unitonegear.com. There is our growing product portfolio of safety accessories is there, starting with Tharro. We have a new helmet coming up, smart lights, a backpack, the whole ecosystem for mobility is being born right now. Very exciting times. Again, part of what this round has done for us is It's putting fuel in the car and just enabling us to speed up and start growing this portfolio rapidly, growing the team, adding more tech, more products into the mix. It's a very, very exciting time for us. And it's all there, unimwantingeer.com. We also have our latest Kickstarter launch just close last week. So we shifted into Indiegogo. We can find us there as well. The whole Aura family. hybrid smart helmet, smart lights, it's all there to be delivered by the end of the year. So yeah, a lot is gonna happen over the next 12 to 18 months, product-wise, market-wise, it's a fun ride. And we're barely getting started and it's a very, very exciting time.

Jason Kirby: Awesome. I think it's going to be on my Christmas list. I've already sent it to my wife and excited to have you on the show.

Juan García Mansilla: Well, if she's worried about you, there's this crash detection thing we have on the helmet. Like, she can know if you had a crash with your location. So this is gonna be a good argument for you to get it on the tree, like for real.

Jason Kirby: But yeah, I think my wife will buy it even if I didn't want it. If she knows about it, she's going to buy it just for those reasons alone. So, you know, really appreciate you having me on the show. This has been an amazing podcast and thanks for joining us.

Juan García Mansilla: Ha ha!

Juan García Mansilla: Absolute pleasure.

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