Pitch slapped

Elijah Khasabo started Vidovo from his bedroom in 2023 while enrolled full-time at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Khasabo graduates in the spring. His sights are set on continuing to grow his creator and influencer marketing platform—which connects more than 22,000 brands and creators to generate revenue through subscriptions and marketplace fees—and is cash flow positive, approaching a $3 million run rate this year, a financial metric to forecast future performance for Vidovo, according to Khasabo.

In 2024 and 2025, Khasabo turned down multiple VC offers. Each time, he and his co-founder, Channing Defoe, talked it through and landed in the same place: no.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is Vidovo, and how does the business make money?

Vidovo is a creator and influencer marketing platform where our whole job is to be the creative engine for brands and be that broker middleman, connecting brands with creators. We’ve supported over 200+ brands. We work with about 22,000 creators, and it’s all organically grown.

The way we make money right now is through a subscription service. We’re like a typical SaaS model—brands will pay us subscription [for] access to the platform, and we also take a small marketplace fee on top of their spend. We’re profitable, and we are growing pretty fast, so things are exciting.

What’s been harder because you didn't raise capital, and how has this affected the business?

I didn’t actually want to do sales when we started. I wanted to be a marketer. I thought being a marketer would be cool. I quickly realized we would never make money or grow if I had that mindset.

I had to take the position of being the face of Vidovo. I had to be the salesman. I had to be the one talking to customers. I had to be the one getting customers. And once I got them in, I had to handle roles from account management to customer success to sales to creating opportunities to growing the business. I was literally the business guy. I had to do everything at once.

What did those early days look like?

There’s definitely days and nights where I wanted to quit. I was very emotional. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done. But I have a single mom who works so hard, and my argument was that she never quit on us. So why would I quit? Anything is possible. You can do anything you put your mind to. I truly believe that, and I saw her do it. Why would I not try?

There were definitely days where I wanted out. I was like, “This isn’t gonna work. I can’t do this. I’m not capable of doing this.” But I think every time I thought, every time I even got close to having those bad thoughts, I would just think, “What else am I gonna do? Literally, what else am I gonna do?” And it really goes back to that nothing-to-lose mentality. There’s nothing else to do. I might as well try.

What did the conversations around venture capital look like? When were you first approached?

We were first approached six months in. We were approached again about seven months in by a different individual, or different team, and we were approached again from there, eight months after that.

We were approached three times in 2024…We were approached twice in 2025. I made it very clear to the last guy we spoke to in 2025. I didn’t want to pursue any conversations. I’ve made it very clear on my LinkedIn that I’m pretty vocal that I am a bootstrapper. I’m very scrappy. I give a lot of our credit and success to bootstrapping. I think it’s more than myself as a character. It’s more than my co-founder. It’s been great character development. I would say it’s allowed us to build in the correct way. It's allowed [us] to build responsibly as well as be very frugal and careful, but also be willing to take great risk at the same time. We have considered it, and I’d be lying if I said [those conversations] didn’t look enticing. The conversations look great. They’re very enticing, but not enticing enough to clearly convince me.

What was tempting about the first offer? Why was it hard to walk away?

If you take that money, you can get to point B 10 times faster, but we knew getting to point B 10 times faster wouldn’t be worth it. It’s just knowing the fact that you could. That hurts. It’s something you just can’t stop thinking about, right? But that’s what probably made it super enticing and super hard not to do.

What has bootstrapping cost you in return?

We could have grown a lot faster. We could have got to point B a lot faster, but, we [wouldn’t] own our company anymore, basically. We [would] have bosses. People don’t like to admit it, but we [would] basically have bosses. It was very painful. It was a mental battle, but it ended up being worth it. I would say everything sort of points back to acceleration, not having the resources, not being able to hire, having to do so many roles at once, and having to learn so much at once while I’m being a student.

How has staying independent changed the way you run Vidovo?

When you bootstrap, everything you build is yours. Your decisions are a lot faster because there’s no one to convince. The discipline of bootstrapping usually makes the company fundamentally healthier. If you have a healthy company—and we are healthy because we’re cash-flow positive, we’re profitable, and we’re growing month over month on all ends, not just revenue on all ends—then you have a great business right there. —JH