📍 San Francisco | 💰 Total Raised: $103.5M | 🎯 Stage: Series B | 🏢 Focus: AI-Native ERP for Finance & Accounting
Campfire is building the AI-native ERP that's bringing accounting into the modern era. Founded by former finance executive John Glasgow, the company now serves hundreds of tech companies, including Replit and PostHog, all while maintaining a lean team and strong unit economics. They've more than doubled revenue for six consecutive quarters and raised three rounds in quick succession: a $3.5M seed, a $35M Series A, and a $65M Series B just 12 weeks later.
John Glasgow, founder and CEO (and still CFO) of Campfire, shares what it's really like to raise over $100M while simultaneously running sales, managing product, and closing your own books. He breaks down the tactical details of running a compressed fundraising process, choosing the right investors, and building an AI-native business that VCs are literally cold-emailing with term sheets.
✓ How Campfire landed unsolicited term sheets from tier-one investors
✓ The brutal reality of fundraising while still running sales calls
✓ The questions to ask when vetting investors for the first time
🎧 Also available on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
"Build a great business and then have an inflection point and raise around an inflection point in the business." - John Glasgow
John's approach to fundraising is simple: wait until your business is genuinely on fire, then compress everything into a tight window. When Campfire went out for their Series A, they were "essentially vertical on the ARR chart." That momentum created its own gravity and investors inevitably wanted in.
Within two weeks of kicking off the Series A process, they had multiple term sheets. The Series B came even faster: top-tier VCs were sliding into John's email with unsolicited term sheets while he was still integrating from the A.
The lesson here is in the timing. Raise when you have real momentum that investors can see and feel.
"I can give anyone a raise at the company but myself. I have to go to the board. They are your boss." - John Glasgow
Most founders think about fundraising as "getting money." John frames it differently: you're selecting your boss for the next 7-10 years. Both of Campfire's lead investors are people John knew, has worked with and most importantly, trusted.
He'd already seen them operate in the boardroom through good times and difficult times. He knew how they reacted under pressure, how they handled tough conversations, and whether they'd support him when he asked for a raise.
If you don't have that history, John's advice is simple: back-channel aggressively. Ask the tough questions. And focus on stage-appropriate investors. Stage-appropriate firms have infrastructure built around your specific needs. Their questions in board meetings are calibrated to your stage. Their executive networks match the roles you're actually hiring. Their reserves are designed to support follow-on rounds at your trajectory.
Treat investor selection like hiring someone onto your team. Because that's what it is. Except they're hiring you too (and you can't fire them!)
"You want to book all of them and stack them all up at the same time, just like job interviews. You want to create FOMO." - John Glasgow
Coming out of Y Combinator, John took their advice seriously: book every investor meeting in the same two-week window. During the seed process, he was doing 10-15 investor meetings per day.
The strategy doesn't change as you move up-market. It just gets more concentrated. The Series A process compressed into two weeks. By the Series B, the list of potential investors was shorter, but the principle remained: get all the term sheets hitting at the same time.
This isn't about playing games. It's about creating a real-time market for your equity. When investors know that other smart investors are moving fast, it validates their own conviction and accelerates their process.
"I passed off nothing. I was the only solution consultant still running the business. A lot of late nights. I remember I opened up a data room for an investor at 1am on a Saturday." - John Glasgow
Here's what the "dream scenario" actually looks like: John raised his Series A and Series B while simultaneously:
It was "sales calls and investor calls kind of just back to back through the day trying to keep both up and to the right." He told his wife they'd go on vacation after the A closed. Then the business inflected again, more term sheets came in, and vacation got pushed until after the B.
Even when investors are chasing you, fundraising is still 2-3 full-time jobs stacked on top of your actual full-time job. Plan accordingly.
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