Welcome to another episode of Fundraising Demystified, a podcast where we delve into the untold stories of successful founders. In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Martins Lasmanis, the co-founder and CEO of Supliful. Join us as we uncover the secrets behind their journey in raising capital and building a platform for brands and influencers to launch their own white-label products.
Journey of Building Supliful
In episode five of Fundraising Demystified, Martins Lasmanis, co-founder of Supliful, shares his journey from an electrical engineer to a venture capitalist and ultimately starting Supliful. After successfully building and selling an e-commerce brand, Martins and his team realized the importance of a strong founding team and the need for a business model with recurring revenue.
They identified the challenges in the consumer packaged goods market and created an innovative solution called 'consumer packaged goods on demand.' With Supliful, brands, and influencers can easily launch their own white-label products, eliminating the need for upfront investment, inventory management, and complicated supply chain logistics. By leveraging technology, Supliful offers a frictionless experience for entrepreneurs to build consumer packaged goods brands and generate recurring revenue.
The Significance of a Strong Team and Challenges in Co-founder Partnerships
We discuss the significance of having a strong team and the challenges faced in co-founder partnerships. Martins, who had experience as a venture capitalist, emphasized the importance of choosing the right partners for long-term success. The discussion then shifted to the decision to focus on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry and its associated problems, such as the lengthy process of bringing products to market.
Martins explained how their platform allows creators, ecommerce specialists, and solo entrepreneurs to launch white-label products and generate additional revenue easily. The platform taps into the e-commerce supply chain and caters to current trends in the creator and community economies.
Challenges Faced by Immigrant Founders
We discuss the challenges faced by an immigrant founder in the US while launching a product and working with investors and partners. Martins mentions that working with partners and doing sales in Europe is not a problem, as people are more interested in the value they can provide. However, raising funds from US investors for the pre-seed round was challenging due to the lack of network and being seen as an outsider.
Some investors in New York and Colorado were not interested because the founder was not from the US and were hesitant to invest without the founder being physically present. The founder understands the need to prove themselves and build trust, as early-stage investments heavily rely on trust. They believe that overcoming these roadblocks makes them grittier, more resilient, and resource-savvy, leading to a sustainable business. Martins emphasizes the importance of building a healthier business.
The Fundraising Journey and Metrics
Martins shares the journey of fundraising and the decision to go down the venture funding route. He highlights their ambition to build a global company that impacts thousands of lives. They explain the need for outsourced investment to achieve this goal within a relatively short timeframe.
The fundraising journey began with investing their own money and building an MVP to prove the concept's viability. They successfully raised a pre-seed round in the Baltics, leveraging their network and connections. Martins emphasizes the importance of network, connections, and personal credibility in the fundraising process.
They then opened a seed round, facing challenges due to a decline in investor enthusiasm. Despite the difficulties, they managed to secure funding through SAFE notes. The continuous cycle of raising funds on a rolling basis created significant pressure on the CEO. The speaker emphasizes the need for mental toughness and a positive mindset. They outline their plans to focus on building the business, aiming to break even and then raise capital to scale. The current total funds raised amount to over 1.5 million, and the goal is to achieve stability and growth.
Fundraising with a sales mindset
Martins shares their strategy for securing investments and evolving their approach. They passed on some venture capitalists due to regulatory requirements. In late 2022, they implemented a personalized cold outreach process, treating it like a sales approach.
They sent VCs a personalized email with an image of a unicorn drawn by their daughter, symbolizing the idea of building something unique. This approach sparked conversations and generated a pipeline of calls. Initially, the process was tight and critical, but as macro trends and failed leads emerged, maintaining control became more challenging.
Building Founder Relationships and Overcoming Challenges
In late December to early January last year, Martins felt they had momentum in their venture, with potential investors ready to follow. However, they passed on a bigger VC commitment, which became a turning point. Despite this, they made the decision to move forward with the resources they had. The ultimate goal is not just to build a unicorn, but to create a billion-dollar company.
They had a runway until March or April, and a visit to Silicon Valley along with outreach efforts helped secure funding from Diazporta Ventures. This extended their runway and built a solid investor list. The speaker plans to go out for the next round by proving the platform play for Suppleful and integrating the first supplier by the end of March. This will eliminate the need for inventory and expand the product catalog. The focus will then shift to scaling and achieving sustainability. Once the supply and demand elements are in place, the speaker aims to acquire capital for scaling in July or June.
Metrics and Challenges in Fundraising
Martins emphasizes the importance of maintaining relationships with investors even if initial funding attempts were unsuccessful. They highlight the significance of sending regular investor updates, which include detailed financial reports and operational insights.
He also discusses the complexity of their business compared to a typical SaaS model, as they have to manage inventory and track its movement. Additionally, they mention the value of setting milestones and metrics for fundraising, such as month-over-month growth rate, diversified revenue sources, revenue generated by customers, Shopify store installs, and retention rates.
Martins acknowledges that cracking the retention challenge is crucial for sustainable business growth. They highlight that many venture capitalists evaluate startups based on these core metrics to project future cash flows and determine sustainability. Focusing on retention can unlock immense potential by increasing the lifetime value of customers and ensuring long-term product usage.
Current Status and Advice for Founders
The company has achieved a GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of over $2 million since its launch, with a twelve-month trailing revenue of approximately $1.3 million. The average monthly growth rate is 18%, falling slightly short of the 20% target. They have around 3,500 installed Shopify stores and more than 10,000 registered users. However, the company is not yet profitable.
Martins shares their fundraising journey and metrics, providing valuable insights for founders. They discuss how founders often compare and analyze their own metrics, highlighting the importance of understanding the differences and similarities. The guest addresses some challenges faced during their fundraising process, particularly related to being based in Europe.
They explain that some investors are hesitant to invest in unfamiliar markets. Additionally, they emphasize the need for alignment between the startup and the investor, as investors often focus on metrics that may not be relevant to the startup's business model.
Finding Compatibility with Venture Capitalists
Martins discusses the importance of compatibility between founders and venture capitalists (VCs) when seeking funding. They highlight that some VCs may try to fit a startup into a predetermined mold, asking only industry-specific questions and not considering the bigger picture.
This approach can lead to a misalignment between the VC's expectations and the startup's unique value proposition. It is advised that founders walk away from such relationships as they indicate a lack of understanding and a potential mismatch.
On the other hand, the speaker emphasizes the value of engaging with VCs who demonstrate genuine interest, ask detailed questions, and offer fresh perspectives on the business. These VCs can provide valuable insights and help founders explore new angles they may not have considered.
Challenges of Cold Outreach and Community Engagement
Martins discusses the challenges of landing meetings as a founder and shares a clever approach to overcome them. They treated the process as a sales process and were persistent, leading to fruitful outcomes. However, they also encountered some tough competition. Martins emphasizes that warm introductions played a crucial role in raising the remaining amount of money. While cold outreach initially helped, most of the funding came through introductions from existing investors and an advisor who was well-connected and a strong supporter of their company.
The podcast episode discusses the challenges faced by founders when it comes to cold outreach and engaging with communities. Cold outreach requires a calculated and diligent approach, rather than a spray-and-pray method.
Links mentioned:
Supliful website: https://supliful.com/
Reach Martins on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinslasmanis/
Reach Martins on Twitter - https://twitter.com/MartinLasmanis
Hosted by Jason Kirby - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrkirby/
Email Jason at jason@thunder.vc
Don't forget to hit subscribe for more episodes!
Martins Lesmanis on Building Supliful & CPG-on-Demand
Episode FAQs
What is Supliful?
How does Supliful’s CPG‑on‑demand model work?
Who is Supliful best for?
How did the team fundraise?
What traction did they share?
What advice did Martins give founders?
Full Transcript
Jason Kirby: Hey everyone, this is Jason Kirby, Founding and Managing Director of Thunder.BC, hosting today Martins Lesmanis for Fundraising Demystify, where we go into the untold raw truth of what actually goes into the fundraising process for running a venture‑backed startup. And we're excited to have you today Martins, and we'd love for you to go into a little bit more about your story and share kind of how you went from initially conceptualizing the company to where you are to now.
Jason Kirby: …and now you're in the position to actually focus on what you want to do and that's build your company. So, I'd love for you to just give me a little bit of your background on yourself and kind of what led you to starting Supliful.
Martins: All right, thanks Jason. Happy to be here and thanks for inviting me on the pod. Super excited to share our story—let's see where the conversation leads. A bit of background about myself: I'm an electrical engineer who turned entrepreneur when I studied an MBA in Sweden. During my studies I started working in venture capital in the Baltics. It's a rather small venture scene, but I worked there for nine years and learned a lot about startups on a high level as well as on a micro level, seeing how different startups compare and what actually happens in each.
Martins: It was a gratifying feeling, but I was a super young guy in my 20s. I got that vibe from companies pitching us that they were thinking, “Who are you? What do you know?” I hadn’t built a business—no street cred. So I decided to get the street cred, and together with the founders of our current company Supliful, we launched our first venture: an e‑commerce brand called graphomup.com. We bootstrapped that business to a bit more than $1.5M in revenue in the US and sold it in 2020.
Martins: That was a big point for us—it took five years. In 2015 we set out to bring a company from zero to one. The goal was to prove we are entrepreneurs, that we understand what it takes, and that our assumptions work. Super gratifying.
Martins: After selling, we realized the best thing with early‑stage startups is teams—the founding team is critical. We knew we needed to do something together again, something bigger to challenge us to the next level. Our competencies are different: Rudolf (one of the co‑founders) is a super skilled technical founder/engineer. Richard, my childhood friend, is one of the best at understanding how to build, position, and market a product—a full‑stack marketer who knows the tools and analytics to push the right buttons. I handle operations, finance, building the organization so it lives beyond the founders.
Martins: That team dynamic is a massive asset. From my VC experience, in about 6 out of 10 investments we went in just to mediate founders to make sure they stick together and execute on the idea. Another thing: we asked how we could leverage the US market again to build a much bigger company. And third, with our previous business there was basically no recurring revenue—we constantly had to acquire more users and pay for ads. We needed a model with subscriptions to drive repeat purchases and increase sales frequency. We wanted to do physical products, so the idea was to build a CPG brand in the US—sports nutrition or wellness.
Martins: As we dug in, we realized how antiquated the market is. It's old‑school—even identifying good suppliers is hard. Once you find them, they email PDFs and spreadsheets. Communication takes months. Then suppliers say you need to invest $10–15K in inventory—pretty risky when you don’t know outcomes. Many don’t offer 3PL solutions, so you have to find a 3PL partner. It’s long, costly, complicated—barriers to entry are high because the risk is massive.
Martins: We thought, there must be a better way. We built an innovative model in CPG we call consumer packaged goods on demand. That’s what Supliful is about: launch your own CPG brand with one click. No MOQs. No upfront investment. Supliful fulfills orders on your behalf to your end customer. You just install the Supliful Shopify app on your store, publish products, and start selling. It’s frictionless.
Jason Kirby: I’m glad you brought up how you focused on team first. With your VC background, early‑stage investing is usually a bet on the team. And the reality of co‑founders is there are head‑butts—great partners (including VCs) can help mediate. That’s valuable insight for our founder community. So you originally decided to go CPG, then identified the real problem while setting up that business—which I’ve dealt with. I had a CPG brand for two years and it took forever just to get to market. We didn’t even focus on marketing until six to nine months later. The fact that you allow anyone to launch white‑label products off the shelf and go live quickly is huge. Are creators your main target audience?
Martins: Yes—creators, e‑commerce specialists, solo entrepreneurs—anyone with a community who wants another revenue stream.
Jason Kirby: You tap into e‑commerce, supply chain, the creator economy, and community‑driven commerce—big trends. One thing we glossed over: you’re in and out of the US, traveling to manage operations in Europe and the US. As an immigrant, how much harder was it to launch in the US and work with US investors and partners?
Martins: Working with partners isn’t a problem—I do a lot of sales from Europe and people don’t care where I’m based; they care about value. With VCs, it’s been more challenging. We have one US angel and a smaller Silicon Valley fund, Diaspora Ventures, which focuses on immigrant founders. But for our pre‑seed, raising from US investors was tough—I had no network and nobody knew me. In New York some told me bluntly, “You’re not from the US; we’re not interested.” In Colorado (Denver is our physical location—office and team there), VCs said I had to move. I pushed back: we’re efficient, and moving a family of five could cost the company $10–15K per month in living expenses. It didn’t seem rational. But I understand early stage is about trust. VCs try to rationalize, but it’s often an emotional decision. The extra roadblocks make us grittier, more resilient, and resource‑savvy, and help us build a sustainable business, not just a venture‑driven one.
Jason Kirby: That mindset leads to successful outcomes. Two years ago VCs wanted burn‑to‑grow; now they want profit. You’re optimized for profit. Switching gears: when did your fundraising journey start, and why pursue venture after bootstrapping an exit?
Martins: We chose venture because of ambition—to build a global company employing thousands with high salaries, impacting thousands of families. To do that in a relatively short time (~10 years), you need outside capital. We started sketching late 2020, invested ~$50K of our own money, and built a closed alpha by February 2021. We took the MVP route—prove what you need for the next round. We generated a few thousand through the platform to validate the concept. In May–June we raised a €410K pre‑seed on SAFEs in the Baltics. It went fast—started Sunday night with the first €50K; by Friday the round was closed. One 30‑minute first‑time call ended with a €100K transfer. That happened because people knew me from nine years in VC. Network matters.
Martins: We used that capital to open our Denver facility, hire key people, and build the platform we launched in October 2021—our business launch date. Then I opened what I called a seed round in Nov/Dec: a $2M seed at $10M pre on rolling SAFEs. In 2022 the market turned—investors were cautious, US investors weren’t doing SAFEs. We still raised ~$460K from existing and a few new investors (including a small early‑stage fund and some HNWIs). For the past year we often operated on 3‑, 2‑, 1‑, or 0‑month runway before new SAFE checks came in. It’s a lot of pressure on the CEO. You can’t seem desperate; you keep moving step by step. Throughout 2022 we raised an additional ~$1M, so total pre‑seed exceeded $1.5M from ~20 investors—all SAFEs. Now we’re focused on building and reaching break‑even in months—raising to scale, not survive.
Jason Kirby: Rolling SAFEs can be burdensome. What was your strategy—how often were you meeting investors, and how did you secure the additional $1M in 2022?
Martins: Late 2022 I ran ultra‑personalized cold outreach and approached it like sales—more personalized stories. For instance, my daughter drew a unicorn that sits behind my desk; I emailed VCs the drawing saying she drew a unicorn while I’m building the real one. It sparked conversations and filled the pipeline. Momentum was good Dec–Jan, but without a lead the process drifted. One VC was ready to lead $500K; we passed due to requirements and that was a turning point. I visited Silicon Valley and, despite COVID‑era dynamics, meeting in person helped—Diaspora Ventures invested $75K, extending runway. Over time, almost everything closed via warm intros—existing investors and advisors introduced us to supportive entrepreneurs.
Jason Kirby: When’s your next round?
Martins: Two things VCs want to see for Supliful: first, proof of the platform play. We currently hold inventory in Denver, but we’re integrating suppliers to dropship directly. First integration at end of March (rolling out April), second by June—removing our inventory while expanding the catalog. Second, scaling demand and hitting break‑even. With those, we can raise to scale. Timeline: June/July.
Jason Kirby: You’ve been sending investor updates over time?
Martins: Yes. We’re super diligent—detailed financial/management reports. This isn’t simple B2B SaaS; we carry inventory and manage movement—more complex. Monthly investor updates and weekly team memos keep focus and create a track record. People’s memory is short—you have to document progress.
Jason Kirby: Can you share milestones or metrics to support the fundraise?
Martins: We track MoM growth rate; revenue diversification across accounts; GMV generated by customers using Supliful; Shopify app installs; Shopify reviews; and retention (our most important metric). Retention is our biggest current challenge—we’re working to make cohorts compound.
Jason Kirby: Any topline numbers you’re comfortable sharing?
Martins: GMV since launch is now more than $2M—around $2.5M. Our trailing 12‑month revenue is close to $1.3M. We’re not yet hitting 20% MoM growth. We have close to 3,500 Shopify installs and more than 10,000 registered users. We’re not yet profitable.
Jason Kirby: Founders like to compare. You faced headwinds—traveling between Europe and the US can put some investors on edge. Some only understand B2B SaaS metrics and try to force a fit, which doesn’t work. In those cases it’s best to walk away.
Martins: Exactly. I’ve had two types of meetings: some keep asking basic questions because they don’t understand the model; others get it instantly, ask sharp questions, and even show new angles. Landing meetings required persistence and creativity, but closing ultimately came via warm intros through advisors and existing investors.
Jason Kirby: As we wrap up—what’s your advice to founders raising capital?
Martins: Everyone’s context is different, but here’s what helped us: build relationships and pursue warm intros while running targeted cold outreach; use automated sequences with firm follow‑ups; batch investor calls on set days so you can focus the rest of the week; add urgency where appropriate; and, above all, build the business via sales. Use funding to scale, not survive—default alive if you can.
Jason Kirby: Sales cures all. If you don’t need the money, you tend to get the money. Where can people follow you?
Martins: I share on LinkedIn and on Twitter day‑to‑day—search for “Martins Lesmanis.” Feel free to reach out with questions. And remember to enjoy the process—tough but fun.
Jason Kirby: Thanks again for joining and sharing your journey. We look forward to watching Supliful scale.
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