How Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld, Co-Founders Of Bonsai Raised $1.5M To Build A Next-Gen Platform For Career Advice?

Patrick Sullivan and Jake Rosenfeld are the Co-Founders of Bonsai. Bonsai is an online platform that connects individuals seeking career advice with professionals doing relevant work over 1:1 video chats.

Patrick Sullivan, Founder and CEO of Bonsai is a New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx, and an experienced leader who is deeply passionate about building companies. He is the former Founder & CEO of Source3 (acquired by Facebook), a data-driven company in the copyright licensing space, enabling both physical & digital product creations around intellectual property. He also founded RightsFlow, data-driven enterprise music licensing and royalty company acquired by Google in 2011. At the time of the acquisition, RightsFlow serviced over 20,000 music labels, distributors, and digital service providers and managed to license for over 30 million recordings tied to billions of transactions. As part of Google, RightsFlow became an integral part of YouTube’s music monetization allowing for a substantial expansion of the scale of Content ID.

Patrick has built businesses that have generated billions of dollars in revenue throughout his career and helped raise over $50 million in the capital.

Jake Rosenfeld, Founder and COO of Bonsai was a VC Investor at Correlation Ventures, a venture capital firm with more than $365M under management. While running Correlation’s New York City office, Jake led the firm’s investments in 17 companies, including Overtime, Bravely, and Burrow. He currently serves as an Advisor to the New York Fashion Tech Lab and a Mentor at Techstars.

Prior to starting Bonsai, Jake was an Investor at Correlation Ventures, a venture capital firm with more than $365M under management. While running Correlation’s New York City office, Jake led the firm’s investments in 17 companies, including Overtime, Bravely, and Burrow. Jake serves as an Advisor to the New York Fashion Tech Lab and a Mentor at Techstars.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld say:

Having a fundamental grip on “why” we are building Bonsai gets us excited to jump out of bed every day, solve problems together, and build something that will benefit society.

You have to go down to go up! Never let your ego prevent you from trying something new and possibly failing – doing so is the only way you can continue to grow in life and career!

Every founder and founding team needs to start a company with a very strong “why”! If there is no good answer to, “why are you starting this,” then founder-market-fit does not exist, and thus product-market-fit will never be discovered.

Read on to know more about Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld and their journey.

What motivated you to get started with your company?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld:

We were motivated to start Bonsai because we believe that social capital is the key to career success. Still, the playing field is very uneven in terms of the opportunity given to pre-professionals to access the right social capital needed to launch a lucrative professional life. To level the playing field, we built a marketplace connecting advice-seekers (college students and young professionals) with advice-givers (professionals and executives across various industries). 

Building Bonsai is near and dear to our hearts. Patrick was born and raised in the Bronx without any business connections to lean on as he launched his career. This time around, we are building a company to impact and level the playing field when it comes to accessing social capital needed to kickstart a robust professional life.

What is your current main product, and can you share any previous product pivot story to the current product?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: Bonsai is a platform connecting advice-seekers (college students and young professionals) with advice-givers (professionals and executives across various industries). Bonsai learns about the professional interests and goals of advice-seekers, pairs them with relevant experts in the workforce, and facilitates affordable 1:1 video chats centered around specific career topics. After each 1:1, advice-givers follow-up with advice-seekers by sharing industry resources, re-booking subsequent 1:1s, or making referrals to job openings or other professionals in their networks.   

Our first product, which we launched under the name, butterfly one, was a skill credentialing and job recommendation app. After launching it, we quickly realized that “knowing about the job” wasn’t the point of friction that young professionals experienced. Instead, they had difficult times gaining “network access” to meet the right people to give them the proper guidance, advice, introductions, and referrals to the right opportunities. Once we recognized this, we pivoted from a “jobs app” to a platform for career advice to inspire networking, work-based-learning, and career planning and exploration.

How much money have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? 

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: We have raised a $1.5M pre-seed round, which we announced in April 2020. 

How have you attracted users, and with what strategy have you grown your company from the start to now?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: Mostly organic and b2b2c partnerships

Which has been the best marketing software tool for the growth of your startup, and why? 

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: We are experimenting with many at the moment

What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: Pouring too much money into acquisition channels before identifying product-market-fit or clearly being able to articulate the perfect end-consumer for your product.

What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fundraising, and what were the logistics for this? And how many investors have you met so far, and how did you meet these investors and which channels worked best for you?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: We are fortunate to have experienced the song and dance of fundraising in the past. Patrick has raised over $50M for businesses he founded and led, and Jake has deployed millions of dollars into early-stage companies that have grown into significant success stories such as Overtime. 

Raising our pre-seed round as a result of us tapping into our networks. Early on, we decided to gather together a group of angel investors, founders, and executives across tech, media, and education to capitalize on the business. All of our investors are true, value-add!

How do you plan to expand globally?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: What we are building transcends borders – we will, very soon, have advice-givers and advice-seekers across the world connecting on Bonsai!

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global expansion?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld:

• Expanding too soon (not owning and reaching product-market-fit in your core market before scaling beyond it)
• Not understanding the local regulatory nuances and distinctions in new markets

How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: For us, we are very fortunate that our core business (a platform for virtual 1:1 video chats centered around career development and advice) is a COVID-proof model. However, as an organization with human capital, we have made many adjustments to survive. One key adjustment has been choosing to leave our NYC office for the time being and pivot into a distributed team. All 7 of us are working from home (and are currently scattered across several states). We are learning how to be as productive, happy, and healthy as possible, given the uncertain and volatile state of the world.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? 

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: They spend too much time and money, building a beautiful product before testing the core hypothesis and validating the core value proposition. 

Every founder and founding team needs to start a company with a very strong “why”! If there is no good answer to, “why are you starting this,” then founder-market-fit does not exist, and thus product-market-fit will never be discovered.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: You have to go down to go up! Never let your ego prevent you from trying something new and possibly failing – doing so is the only way you can continue to grow in life and career!

What are the top-three books or movies (TV series) that changed your life and why?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld:

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight – shows the true grit behind the entrepreneurial journey

The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh – teaches the life-changing value that “being present” can bring to one’s life

Both of us are very influenced by music!

How do you keep yourself motivated every day?

Patrick Sullivan And Jake Rosenfeld: Having a fundamental grip on “why” we are building Bonsai gets us excited to jump out of bed every day, solve problems together, and build something that will benefit society

• Exercise
• Sleep
• Coffee 🙂

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

You can follow Patrick Sullivan here.

You can follow Jake Rosenfeld here.

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