This Startup Got Funded By Getting Naked And Walking On Hot Coals With Investors

There's this Estonian company called Pipedrive and it just raised $2.4 million in a seed round from Storm Ventures and Jason Lemkin of Echosign. Our hats are off to them, which is the very type of clothing removal that helped seal the deal on the round.

Founder Timo Rein explains:

Since our investors come from literally all over the world, we've had a hard time getting them all in one place. Instead, we look up a place and invite a few of them there. So, this time in June we had two of them joining us for walking on hot coals and smoke sauna. By the look of it, they seemed very satisfied with the whole thing.

In the smoke sauna at 2 AM, one of the investors asked the other: "So hey, how many of your portfolio company founders have you seen naked in a sauna before?"

He said, "None," which we all laughed about. Later in a private conversation that first investor told us that "after you guys saw his balls, there's no way he's gonna back out from investing :)"

Think of Pipedrive as a to-do list designed to help you accomplish any task that needs to be carried out in stages. It visually breaks up a project into smaller, more manageable stages (which the company calls "deals"). This makes it useful for getting all kinds of things done, whether it's to manage your company's sales pipeline or just finish your term paper.

Here's what it looks like. You can learn more at Pipedrive's site.