The Long Game: How Tive Turned 600 Investor Conversations Into $80M

The Long Game: How Tive Turned 600 Investor Conversations Into $80M

Six hundred to eight hundred investor conversations. Fourteen to eighteen term sheets received. Five or six deals actually closed. Over nine years, Krenar Komoni, Founder and CEO of Tive, maintained a conversion rate that would make most sales leaders weep. But he wasn’t optimizing for conversion velocity—he was optimizing for conviction.

The investors who eventually wrote checks weren’t the ones who said yes immediately. They were the ones who watched Krenar execute consistently over months and years, building a pattern of predictability that turned skepticism into trust. Some took six months. Others took twenty-four.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Krenar shared the systematic approach to fundraising that turned hundreds of investor relationships into $80 million in funding and positioned Tive for an eventual IPO. The lesson for founders: fundraising isn’t about pitching—it’s about proving you can draw a straight line from point A to point Z, one quarterly update at a time.

The Trust-Building Framework

Most founders approach fundraising as a discrete event: you need money, you take meetings, you close a round. Krenar approached it as relationship infrastructure that runs parallel to building the business. The process started with a simple commitment.

“One of the biggest things is you tell them what you’re going to do next, and I’ll check in with you in three months. And then three months later, you were at point A three months ago. Now you’re at point B, and they can start drawing a line,” Krenar explains.

The power isn’t in the initial conversation. It’s in the pattern that emerges over multiple check-ins. Any founder can claim they’ll hit certain milestones. Krenar actually reported back three months later with evidence of progress. Then three months after that. Then six months later.

“Then three months later, six months later, you’re at point C, and you’ve told them you’ll be at point C. And ideally you want to be a little bit above point C with more traction,” he notes. The compounding effect of consistent execution creates something emails and pitch decks never can: investor conviction based on observed behavior rather than promised potential.

Why Nobody Invests on Day One

The fundamental insight behind Krenar’s approach is understanding what actually drives investment decisions. “Nobody will just write a check the first day that you meet them,” he states matter-of-factly. Yet many founders operate as if investors should decide immediately based on market opportunity and team quality alone.

Investors see hundreds of compelling pitches annually. Most describe massive markets. Most tout strong teams. The differentiator isn’t the vision—it’s the demonstrated ability to execute against that vision systematically. That takes time to prove.

“They will write the check three months, six months, nine months later, or twelve months later, sometimes 20 months, 24 months later,” Krenar explains. Those timelines aren’t due to investor indecision. They’re the natural duration required to observe whether a founder actually executes as promised.

The implication: fundraising should start long before you need the money. By the time you’re ready to formally raise, ideal investors should already have months or years of data points showing your execution pattern.

The Mechanics of Predictable Over-Delivery

Krenar’s system depended on two elements: specificity and over-delivery. The specificity came in the initial commitment—not vague promises about growing the business, but concrete milestones around customer acquisition, product releases, or revenue targets.

The over-delivery came from consistently exceeding those commitments. “Ideally you want to be a little bit above point C. So then they start building this line from A to B to C and can say, wow, I can actually trust Krenar as a Founder, as an entrepreneur,” he explains.

That slight over-delivery matters more than massive over-delivery. Promising to reach $500K in ARR and hitting $520K demonstrates reliability. Promising $500K and hitting $1M might suggest you’re bad at forecasting or got lucky. Investors aren’t looking for lottery tickets—they’re looking for founders who understand their business well enough to predict its trajectory accurately.

“If he’s telling me he’s going to do ABC, he’s going to do D all the way to IPO, I’m going to back him up,” Krenar notes. The logic chain is simple: if you can accurately predict the next three months six times in a row, investors gain confidence you can predict the next five years.

The Advice-Gathering Approach

During those multi-month relationship-building periods, Krenar wasn’t just reporting metrics. He was gathering intelligence. “You get advice from everyone because there’s a lot of amazing investors out there. And then you digest all of that and you say, this is what I’m going to do next,” he explains.

This approach served dual purposes. First, it extracted genuine value from investor conversations even before any money changed hands. Different investors bring different operational expertise—some understand hardware economics, others know supply chain dynamics, others have scaled sales teams in similar markets.

Second, it demonstrated intellectual humility and coachability. Investors aren’t just betting on your current capabilities—they’re betting on your ability to learn and adapt. Systematically gathering their input, filtering it, and implementing relevant pieces showed Krenar as someone who would use their capital and advice effectively.

Why the Math Works Despite Low Conversion

Talking to 600-800 investors to close five or six deals seems inefficient until you understand the selection mechanism at work. Krenar wasn’t trying to convince every investor—he was finding the subset who understood the supply chain opportunity deeply enough to recognize Tive’s potential and who valued consistent execution over hypergrowth promises.

Those 14-18 term sheets represented investors who’d observed enough of Tive’s trajectory to commit capital. The five or six deals Krenar actually closed were the ones with the best terms, most aligned expectations, and most valuable strategic value beyond the money itself.

The hundreds of other conversations weren’t wasted effort. They served as market research on how different types of investors think about the space, what concerns they raise, and what milestones move them from skeptical to interested. Each conversation refined Krenar’s ability to identify which investors were worth cultivating long-term relationships with.

What This Approach Demands From Founders

This fundraising strategy only works if you’re actually executing predictably. You can’t manufacture the pattern—you have to deliver it. That requires three things founders often struggle with: accurate forecasting, consistent communication, and long-term thinking.

Accurate forecasting means understanding your business well enough to predict quarterly progress. Consistent communication means actually following up every three months even when you’re buried in operational challenges. Long-term thinking means investing in investor relationships months or years before you need the capital.

The payoff isn’t just better fundraising outcomes. It’s better investor partnerships. When investors have watched you execute for 18 months before investing, they understand your operating style, your market challenges, and your decision-making process. They’re better partners because they’ve already been observing the partnership.

From Pattern Recognition to IPO Preparation

Today, Tive has raised $80 million across multiple rounds and is preparing for an eventual IPO. The company has 205 employees and has shipped over 1.5 million trackers. Looking ahead, Krenar sees the company reaching $200 million-plus in revenue within three to five years.

That trajectory exists because investors who wrote checks to Tive didn’t just believe in supply chain visibility or GPS tracking technology. They believed in Krenar’s demonstrated ability to forecast quarterly progress accurately and deliver consistently.

“Same way as you build trust with customers, you got to build trust with the venture capital community and with the investor community,” Krenar reflects. The mechanism is identical: commit to specific outcomes, execute against those commitments, report back transparently, and repeat until the pattern becomes undeniable.

Most founders optimize for closing the current round quickly. Krenar optimized for building relationships that would support multiple rounds over years. The difference shows up in the quality of investors, the terms of deals, and the ultimate outcome—not just whether you raise money, but whether you raise money from partners who understand your journey because they’ve already been watching it unfold.