When Victor Cardenas started Slash in 2020, he wasn't trying to build a massive business banking platform.

He was trying to solve a very specific problem for sneaker resellers.

That narrow starting point helped Slash find product-market fit quickly. But it also created a serious vulnerability. Just months after raising a $15 million Series A, 70% of the company's revenue disappeared when the sneaker resale market collapsed.

For Cardenas, that could have been the moment Slash broke.

Instead, it became the reason the company expanded beyond sneakers and eventually into marketing agencies, venture-backed startups, and larger businesses. Today, Slash serves thousands of businesses and has raised $160 million across multiple rounds, including funding from NEA.

Speaking with Nathan Beckord on How I Raised It, Cardenas explained how that journey changed the way he thinks about customers, fundraising, growth, and ownership.

1. Start With a Customer You Understand Extremely Well

Slash wasn't originally supposed to be a business banking company.

Cardenas and his co-founder initially worked on a subscription-splitting product that would allow people to share streaming subscriptions through virtual cards. They spent considerable time on the idea, but it went nowhere.

Then they met the founder of Hyper, a platform used by communities including sneaker resellers.

That conversation changed the direction of the company.

Cardenas started talking to sneaker resellers and quickly discovered that they had unusual banking needs. Many were young entrepreneurs with significant cash in their accounts but low traditional credit scores. They also needed to make large purchases quickly, sometimes spending thousands of dollars on a single sneaker release.

Slash built around those specific needs.

The product allowed customers to spend large amounts from their own accounts and create multiple cards to participate in sneaker raffles. It wasn't a generic banking product with a different landing page. It was tailored to how that particular customer actually operated.

The result was dramatic.

Slash went from zero to $5 million in annual recurring revenue in its first year, according to Cardenas.

That experience shaped one of his core beliefs about building products:

"You win when your customer writes your product roadmap for you."

The lesson isn't that every startup needs to target a tiny niche forever.

It's that a narrow customer problem can give you something much more valuable in the early days: a deep understanding of what customers actually need.

2. When Your Market Disappears, Follow Your Customers

Slash's early success created a problem of its own.

By the time the company raised its $15 million Series A, 90% of its customers were still in the sneaker resale business. Then Adidas and Kanye West ended their relationship, and the sneaker market was hit hard.

For Slash, the impact was immediate.

Revenue fell by roughly 70%.

Cardenas describes it as one of the toughest moments of his entrepreneurial career. He had raised a large round, hired experienced people, and sold them on a vision he suddenly wasn't sure he could deliver.

But the crisis forced the company to confront something it had already suspected: sneaker resellers were never going to be a large enough market for the business Slash wanted to build.

Instead of abandoning the customers it had spent years getting to know, the company followed them.

Many of those resellers moved into other businesses, including Amazon reselling, affiliate marketing, and agencies. Slash went back to those same entrepreneurs and asked what they needed now.

That became the company's path into new markets.

The approach was simple: stay close to the customer, even when the customer's business changes.

Slash eventually moved upmarket, expanding from individual operators into businesses generating more than $20 million in annual revenue.

For Cardenas, the experience reinforced a lesson that sounds obvious but becomes difficult to follow when a company is growing:

"You always have to be talking to the customer."

The market can change. Your product can change. Your customer can change.

The relationship is what allows you to see those changes early.

3. Your Pitch Needs to Connect Today's Business to Tomorrow's Company

One of the more interesting parts of Cardenas' fundraising philosophy is how he thinks about the difference between what a company is doing today and what it could eventually become.

When Slash was primarily serving sneaker resellers, Cardenas didn't pitch investors on becoming the world's best banking product for sneaker resellers.

The immediate business was narrow.

The ambition wasn't.

He described Slash's long-term vision as becoming something closer to the "JPMorgan Chase of the 21st century", with differentiated banking products built for different industries.

The important part was connecting the two.

Slash had already demonstrated that it could build a highly tailored financial product for one industry. The larger thesis was that the same playbook could be replicated across much larger markets.

That gave investors something concrete to evaluate.

Cardenas describes the founder's job as toggling between two modes: the practical question of how you're going to grow the business tomorrow, and the much bigger question of where the business could ultimately go.

For founders, those two stories don't have to compete.

Your current traction should provide evidence that you can execute on the larger vision.

The wedge is what you can prove today. The vision is where that wedge can take you.

4. Don't Raise Because You Need the Money

Slash has raised $160 million in equity across its funding history, including a $2.5 million seed led by NEA, a $15 million Series A, a $41 million Series B, and a $100 million Series C.

But Cardenas says he has deliberately avoided raising when the company desperately needed capital.

In fact, he considers that one of the biggest mistakes founders make.

His reasoning is straightforward: when you need money urgently, the investor has more leverage. When you have runway and the ability to keep operating without the round, the dynamics change.

Cardenas says he enters fundraises with the mindset that if the round doesn't happen, he can simply go back to running the company because Slash has been capital efficient and, more recently, profitable.

He also believes founders spend too much time obsessing over fundraising tactics.

Which investors should you contact first? How quickly should you respond? What's the perfect fundraising strategy?

Cardenas' answer is much simpler:

"What's going to materially actually help your ability to close this round is if you have a freaking awesome business."

That doesn't mean fundraising strategy is irrelevant.

It means the strategy can't compensate for a weak underlying business.

5. Raising More Money Isn't Always the Same as Winning

Cardenas' most personal advice comes when Nathan asks what he would tell his younger self.

His answer is: be patient.

Early in Slash's journey, he gave up 1% of the company for just $10 through an accelerator program. He later raised additional money before the company's official seed round. Looking back, he wishes he had waited until the business had more leverage before selling equity.

His reasoning is worth considering carefully.

When a founder sells equity, they're not simply exchanging ownership for cash today. They're giving away a percentage of the company they may spend decades building.

Cardenas thinks about dilution in those terms.

By the time Slash had raised $160 million, he still owned almost a quarter of the company, while he and his co-founder together owned just under half.

That's why he tells founders not to become overly focused on the headline size of a fundraise.

"Fundraising is cool and flashy, but owning a bigger chunk of your business is much cooler."

For an early-stage founder, that can mean resisting the temptation to raise simply because capital is available.

Sometimes the best negotiating position is having enough runway to say no.

Final Thought

Victor Cardenas' Slash story started with a very small market: sneaker resellers.

That narrow focus helped the company build a product customers genuinely wanted. When that market collapsed, the company didn't abandon the customer relationships it had built. It followed those customers into new businesses, learned what those businesses needed, and expanded from there.

The same philosophy shows up in how Cardenas thinks about fundraising.

Build a strong business first. Keep your customers close. Give investors a credible path from today's wedge to tomorrow's vision. Raise when capital can help you make bigger bets, rather than when you desperately need it.

And perhaps most importantly, remember that the amount you raise is only one measure of progress.

How much of the company you still own, how much leverage you have, and how much control you retain over the decisions ahead matter too.