This Entrepreneur Reveals What She Learned From Telling Investors About a Major Misstep She Made

Cherae Robinson founder and CEO of Tastemakers Africa, a mobile app for booking experiences in Africa, found it challenging transitioning from a boostrapped company to one with outside capital behind it.

When she received an influx of cash from investors, along with revenue from a sales push, her first thought was to grow. Robinson, a New York City resident, believed the best way to scale was for her to fly to African countries to get the program off the ground. In one month, she went to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria -- and spent $20,000.

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“Our money was dwindling down,” she says. “When we tried to figure out how much we had grown we realized that we did very little.”

The last thing she wanted to do was tell investors she made a mistake but learned from the process that VCs are a tool to help your company, and not just an entity to impress. “Your job as a CEO is not to look good in front of your investors, it’s to grow your business,” she says.