Welcome to Startups for the rest of us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. In this week's show,

we look at someone who bootstrapped her company for two years before raising five and a half

million dollars over the next couple years, growing to 400 employees, and then having the company

implode before her eyes. Merrin Kate is an entrepreneur who's been starting companies

since she was 19 years old,

and she started her company's Zirtual

in the 2010-2011 time frame.

Zirchual is essentially virtual assistance

on a monthly retainer.

So you paid a monthly price

for a set number of dedicated hours

from a virtual assistant.

And the company became quite successful. She got to

about a million dollar monthly run rate, so almost 12 million a year. And in 2015, they were,

you know, burning a couple hundred thousand dollars a month. And at a certain point, they weren't

able to raise that next round of funding and finances

were screwed up.

You'll hear us talk about it in this interview.

But it's a fascinating and frankly, it's a devastating story to hear how virtual did implode

and to hear Marin recount what that felt like.

But she bounced back and we hear how she then went out to start her next company,

Avra Talent, just a year later. And we dig into Marin's expertise and experience in hiring people.

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