Carlos N. Escutia On Raising $70 Million For His Furniture as a Service Company And Now Bootstrapping An AI-Driven Platform To Streamline IT Asset Management

Carlos N. Escutia’s entrepreneurial journey is an exciting story of experiences drawn from diverse roles across countries, industries, and business models. It is a fine example of adaptability, resilience, and strategic thinking.

His latest venture, GroWrk, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like K20 Fund, Hustle Fund, Act One Ventures, and Allied Venture Partners.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs in the textile industry shaped Carlos’ problem-solving mindset and adaptability.
• Carlos’ exposure to U.S. and Mexican markets provided a seamless cultural experience and business understanding.
• Working in investment banking taught Carlos the complexities of large-scale business problems and the importance of pattern recognition.
• Carlos transitioned from investment banking to entrepreneurship, co-founding Banverde, a green bank focused on renewable energy financing in Latin America.
• The COVID-19 pandemic forced Carlos’ company, CasaOne, to pivot dramatically, highlighting the importance of flexibility in business.
• Carlos emphasized the benefits of bootstrapping GroWrk, focusing on sustainable growth and self-sufficiency over rapid VC-driven expansion.
• GroWrk’s mission is to revolutionize IT lifecycle asset management, providing global companies with AI-powered tools for efficient and informed decision-making.

 

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About Carlos N. Escutia:

Carlos N. Escutia is the CEO of GroWrk, a modern-day furniture subscription company focused on serving businesses and urban dwellers who like to access and experience, rather than own, pretty much everything.

Prior to joining GroWrk, they were a partner at DG Energy Capital (now Banverde), the first private equity fund solely dedicated to finance the development of the residential and industrial solar distributed generation sector in Mexico.

Carlos also served as co-founder and head of business and operations at CasaOne from January 2017 to January 2020.

Carlos began their career as an investment banker with Wells Fargo Securities in May 2011 and later joined Results International Group LLP in November 2009.

In June 2009, they completed a summer associate program at Barclays Investment Bank. Carlos has also been involved with CAAAPITAL as a non-executive partner and investor since February 2015.

Carlos N. Escutia has an MBA in Finance, Entrepreneurship & Innovation from NYU Stern School of Business and a B.A. in Business Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Connect with Carlos N. Escutia:

• LinkedIn
• TheOrg
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: righty Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. so Today, we have ah another founder that has done it multiple times, you know and successfully so. you know it’s It’s interesting how he’s done it from like the capital racing side, you know racing like crazy from VCs to then, you know maybe more the bootstrapping side of figuring out how to achieve product market fit. you know Also, we’re going to be talking about how to be flexible and adapt to the new changes, as well as building a fully remote team and the rapid changes in the market. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Carlos Escutia. Welcome up to the show.

Carlos N. Escutia: Thank you, Alejandro. A pleasure to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in the US, you know family of entrepreneurs you know with roots out of Mexico. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life for growing up for you?

Carlos N. Escutia: That’s correct. yeah no I was born into a family of entrepreneurs. ah you know Growing up ah ah you know firsthand, I saw my father basically building a business from scratch in the textile industry. And so because of that exposure, for me, it was kind of you know natural, right, just to be in in the place of solving problems and building something from scratch.

Carlos N. Escutia: And so yeah, that exposed me to multiple things. I had the opportunity to live in both countries, the US and Mexico growing up. And so it was kind of a seamless experience for me.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in your case, you know what what was it like the experience also of seeing you know the family going through the cycles of building and scaling a business?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, it was interesting. you know For a lot of folks, sometimes that’s ah that’s a good thing. And for others, not so not so much. and And I think that I saw everything you know across the board. My family was in the industry and the in the textile industry space. And so with manufacturing facilities in Mexico and and when the Asian you know market ah entered a you know Latin American markets, basically, you plummeted the price the the prices of these products. and so Effectively, a lot of businesses went out and and that you know forced my family business to pivot. Hey, hey you know instead of manufacturing, we should get into trading and start building you know manufacturing relationships in China itself. and so That is kind of what expanded

Carlos N. Escutia: Just the capability to understand what the challenges are and adapting to those changes fast so that you can continue growing, I think it was a critical lesson you know at an early age.

Alejandro Cremades: So eventually, you you ended up packing the bags and went to New York where you did your MBA at NYU. And then from there, you went into the into the investment banking world out of all places. I’m wondering, like during the investment banking years, what do you think were some of the things that you learned more towards pattern recognition you know with companies that work versus some that don’t?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, that’s a great question, Alejandro. And I think that, you know, the main thing for me was what it is like to work with, you know, 14, 500 companies, right? The type of problems that you have to overcome when it comes down to data, you know, security, ah and just processes altogether. Everything is a lot more complex. Everything is a lot more detailed than what I was used to. But but look, I mean, ultimately,

Carlos N. Escutia: It’s the understanding that there are just so many markets out there that you’re not even aware of. and Once you get exposure, at least you know when I was in investment in banking side of things to so many business models and the size of the markets and the problems that those companies have, you do come to realize that you know no matter what stage your organization is, you will always have problems.

Carlos N. Escutia: You have problems when you’re a small company, you have problems when you’re growing, you have problems when you’re a mature, you know, a publicly traded corporation. The nature of problems just evolves, right? And you just need to be able to figure things out and work with people that have that mindset of problem solving because they will always be there.

Alejandro Cremades: So then, so then in this case, you know, for you, you know, you ended up a, you know, working there, but then you saw the opportunity to go back to Mexico, you know, which was working for a corporate, they like relaunching their corporate venture fund of a hundred mill. I mean, that’s quite the, uh, the turnaround of events there.

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, for me, it was just marrying kind of both things, right? I had the entrepreneurial kind of side of things growing up and then the financial services exposure working in investment banking. So the opportunity came up for me to join a newly created venture fund in Mexico City. So I relocated from New York to Mexico City to get that going. And it was super interesting experience. I wasn’t really into the you know startup ecosystem in Mexico yet. So I had the opportunity to actually you know get to know it and and familiarize with what was happening there and make a few interesting investments in multiple industries. right ah but But really the the biggest thing was realizing you know this is the path. right I got to get back into an entrepreneurial path and that was kind of the springboard and know to do that.

Alejandro Cremades: So walk us through how did that happen? At what point do you realize, hey, I think I got ah i gotta to build my own destiny here?

Carlos N. Escutia: yeah Yeah, I mean, just being in the middle with a bunch of entrepreneurs, looking to solve problems, interesting problems, you just realize, hey, you know this is a lot more exciting than you know you know them where I am right now.

Carlos N. Escutia: And so I partner up with a couple of ah people from Chile living in Mexico to ah start what is now one of the what is one of the largest green banks in in Latin America.

Carlos N. Escutia: called Bamberta and so Bamberta really is an evolution of initially we were looking to provide financing solutions to you know large renewable energy infrastructure projects and then it shifted into hey you know there’s an opportunity with yeah you know solar distributed a sort of distributed projects where the financing is not there, the tax credits are not there like the ones that you see in the US or elsewhere. So there’s an opportunity to make an impact there and help in that transition. And so we launched this firm and we raised some capital and it is an ongoing concern. We are providing funding for small businesses to install

Carlos N. Escutia: you know solar panels and help them lower their energy costs and accelerate this transition from you know fossil fuels to renewable energy. So that’s that’s been a very exciting ride. and And so that’s what we did. I mean, right after I left the venture fund, I did this and then an opportunity came up to a join a startup from the very beginning in San Francisco in the furniture space. And and that’s that’s the reason why I relocated back to the States.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, it’s it’s it’s quite the phone call not that you receive because here’s the phone call you know for you to join you know this co-founder in this new chapter, but you’re also leaving behind you know a company that you also you know founded yourself. I mean, I’m sure that was not an easy decision.

Carlos N. Escutia: um for sure. but But one of the things that you know, you got to keep in mind is that

Carlos N. Escutia: There are certain things for certain people, and and you know I am one of those folks that really likes the challenge and is really always kind of tuned to where the opportunity is located. If it makes sense, you know not be afraid to chase it. don’t don’t really married to one place or one location. If you see an opportunity, if you really get make sense of the upside ah potential of doing something that is exciting, you know really go for it. right so That was really my decision. At that point, my thought process was, hey, you know we already got this off the ground. It’s ongoing. you know The value that I can bring to this project

Carlos N. Escutia: At that point, you know it’s it’s in a way limited ride versus joining a new thing from scratch that is exciting. right and so that’s That was really kind of the the yeah the thought process behind taking that step. and so I moved to San Francisco to get this going.

Alejandro Cremades: So what happened next?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, so with so we we started a company and I joined this company as a co-founder and head of operations, a a company called Casa One. Casa One was a yeah furniture rental platform and that we were able to raise capital from actual partners and freestyle ventures and a bunch of well-known investors. and and Really, the objective was to provide a SaaS-like solution for furniture, right? Instead of you spending all this capex and furniture, especially for short-term hospitality companies, you know, turn it into an operating expense by leasing it from us with a tech platform.

Carlos N. Escutia: So that’s what we set out to do. We scaled this company really fast. We raised up you know a lot of money, about close to $70 million. dollars And you know where we’re where we’re serving customers like Airbnb and you know competitors to Airbnb in the same space, furnishing entire buildings all over the US. And so that then that business just scaled pretty fast and and everything was going very well right until the pandemic arrived.

Carlos N. Escutia: The pandemic arrived and it just stopped every single thing around hospitality.

Alejandro Cremades: So what happened then?

Carlos N. Escutia: And so our largest customers were in the hospitality space. And since we were not getting revenue from anywhere, you know that company basically hit a hit a wall. And it was not only us, it was every single competitor that we had.

Carlos N. Escutia: So ultimately, every every company had to pivot or shut down in that space. But as we were building Casa 1, one of the kind of issues that I came across scaling it is that we started hiring employees outside of the Bay Area, San Francisco to be precise, because it was a lot more cost-effective, especially in India. right and so you know I had to deal with a lot of issues of, how do you equip this you know key members that are not in office? and you know We still need to you know take care of them and ensure that they are.

Carlos N. Escutia: up and running at all times right and so then i just noticed that there were a lot of companies were doing exactly the same thing as i as i were hiring and you know asia land america europe because it was more cost effective this was all before the pandemic then the pandemic arrives and it accelerates you know.

Carlos N. Escutia: everything you have seen ah around remote you know distributed work from years to months, right? And so we were right there at the right time building this idea when we launched where now everybody is remote, now everybody needs to figure it out or work from home or you know whatever. And now you have to deal with all this IT t you know complexity. How do you manage the equipment, ah deliver it, maintain it, et cetera. So that is really but what put us on the map and we gained traction pretty fast early on.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess before we dig deep into growth work here, but I want to ask you, I mean, and with Casa One, what um what a turnaround of events. So you go from raising 77 million like crazy growth, super success to all of a sudden.

Alejandro Cremades: all of a sudden COVID really, you know, hitting the reset for you.

Carlos N. Escutia: yeah

Alejandro Cremades: I mean, I’m sure that that was for you to, at a personal level, quite the roller coaster of emotions and and and and quite a journey for you. How how was that for you?

Carlos N. Escutia: that’s That’s a great question, and and it is true. i mean Ultimately, you do try to separate it, and I think in hindsight, you know you you see it kind of like, yeah, it was it was the best thing that could have happened, right? But at the time, you know it really sucks. That’s a reality. i mean you It sucks that you know customers you know are shutting down. you know you have to let go of people and just to try to survive and you know you have to manage expectations with your investors and deal with you know very difficult conversations, including with your co-founders. I mean, the infight and all that, that naturally happens when you know stress levels are you know that high, right? ah but But look, I mean, ultimately, you do what you can and and and at some point, you just need to

Carlos N. Escutia: take a call, right? Like, hey, this is gonna go somewhere or is it time for you to, you know, go in a different direction and just go for it?

Alejandro Cremades: So eventually you ended up going in a different direction and here we are with grow work for the people that are listening. What is the business model of grow work? How do you guys make money?

Carlos N. Escutia: Ah! So Growwork, again, was based out of like ah my own experience scaling custom one, right? and And really what we focus on is on providing IT t a lifecycle asset management solutions for companies of all sizes. We work with you know startups all the way to publicly trade a company with thousands of employees globally.

Carlos N. Escutia: right And so what we helped them do is that we helped them automate everything from IT equipment procurement to delivering these devices, these assets to ah their employees or contractors anywhere in the world in over 150 countries, as well as providing a help and support 24-7, logistics solutions, retrieving, delivering devices and storing devices, managing end of life,

Carlos N. Escutia: it you know ah It needs everything at the touch of a button through the grower platform. That’s in a nutshell what we do. It’s a big need. It’s ah it’s a growing need as more companies go global by hiring, you know, remote or distributed workers or contractors. And we are in the middle of it all.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, you’ve taken a different direction with grow work when it comes to financing the business, you know especially having been used to raising all that money with Casa One, 77 million as we were talking about.

Alejandro Cremades: You know you are now you know used to, ah let’s say, the um the the VCs, the top VCs, you had the relationships. Why not going the hyper growth route again?

Alejandro Cremades: Why did you choose the bootstrapping route?

Carlos N. Escutia: yeah Yeah. No, I mean, and then it’s one of those lessons, right? ah Going back to your your other question of of what what was it like, right? Going through that rapid growth and then, you know, hitting a wall. I wanted to make sure that With good old work, we, in fact, were building a business that could sustain itself, that did not depend on investor money or external you know capital to to make it work. That was the first thing. so Instead of going out of market and trying to raise as much as we could early on, yeah we knew that this solution was a lot more complex. And and and actually, you know, it goes hand in hand with with my previous experience, because with GrowWorks, we deal with logistics, right? We do have a SaaS platform, there’s a lot of software in involved, but you do deal with the real world. And that was my experience with CasaOne, where we’re dealing with the real world of managing

Carlos N. Escutia: you know, furniture, storing furniture, delivering furniture. It’s the same thing, but now in the IT space, we’re managing the assets, the actual laptops, you know, monitors and all that stuff in 150 countries. So that is kind of the parallel to what we’re doing. But I wanted to make sure that in fact, you know, this was self-sustainable and we did not depend on any external capital. So that was my focus early on. And we really, for grower, cannot raise that much capital within bootstrap, almost bootstrap. ah from early on and and we’ve been scaling you know pretty nicely. We are you know we have been cashflow positive on and off. you know We are a 100 plus team you know globally distributed and you know continue to rapidly accelerate our road. So it’s it’s just a night and day which

Carlos N. Escutia: you know As you know, um the market has shifted radically from the time when we were when I was at Casa 1, where it was easy to raise tens of millions of dollars. Now, you know and in today’s world, it’s so difficult that you know unless you’re an AI and have a nice story and experience,

Carlos N. Escutia: do you do see those those funding rounds, right? But now it’s a lot harder to raise capital. And so that is that place in our favor, because we build a ah business that you know has a great unit economics, you know it’s capital efficient. And it’s pretty easy to establish a conversation with a growth equity investor, venture fund or strategic and just show them, hey, this is what we’re building, this is what we’re doing, this is how big the market is and how we continue to expand. So if we wanted to raise capital, it’s just a lot easier these days. And the fact that we didn’t raise at a ridiculous valuation early on, you know, also makes that possible, right?

Alejandro Cremades: How do you go to about managing risks when you are a bootstrap company? Because when you have um you know VC money, you have a little bit more in the bank you know to take risks. What about when you know you don’t have those resources? How do you go about managing risk and making sure that you’re not making the mistake? Because mistakes you know when you’re bootstrapping you know could be lethal.

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, for sure. Look, I mean, there’s there’s level of, um we’re not 100% bootstrap, right? We did raise some capital. I think the biggest difference is you just don’t go out and raise a big round or as like um the biggest round possible early on, right? You actually go the other round, you try to raise, you know, 250, 500,000, you know, just to prove and make sure that you have a business that there is value, right? And once you have that, you know, you got the data, and you’re able to prove that there’s something there, then you know, you can figure it out and and and determine whether it makes sense to race more, right? And in a more conservative way, instead of the traditional route of just race as much as you can, and you’ll figure it out, you know, how to how to justify, you know, the

Carlos N. Escutia: those rates were hitting those those expectations, right, that growth expectations. So now, you know, the world has shifted in that it’s not only growth what you’re pursuing, it’s actually, hey, are you making money? Are you actually going to be able to make money anytime soon, right? And so that has been our focus from day one. And because of that, we haven’t been in the necessity to raise more capital since we have been organically growing from the same growth that we’re generating.

Carlos N. Escutia: So I think that’s the biggest shift right now. So what we but we have done, it’s kind of what’s happening with most companies these days where it’s not really grow at all cost anymore. and It’s like, hey, can you make money, right? And and and and that’s really what the the focus for investors is in today.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it. So I guess for the people that are listening too, how do you go about hearing the um vision? So if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, look, at specifically specifically about Growwork.

Alejandro Cremades: ah work

Carlos N. Escutia: So look, we’re building a next generation IT lifecycle asset management platform. What does that mean? It means that every single company is shifting to a cloud solution to automating as much as possible of their day-to-day processes that they typically have to run you know internally and that costs a lot and it’s very and are very inefficient. right So what Growwork is doing is that we’re building a platform that is AI-powered with the capability to predict what your needs will be in the near future so that you can always optimize your capital expenses and be a lot more efficient with scaling your company

Carlos N. Escutia: ah the in a way that you know provides a great experience to any employee or a contractor, no matter where they’re working from. So you know really solving for what we do with an IT, t it’s it’s important for global companies today. And so you know the the the vision that we have at GrowWork is,

Carlos N. Escutia: you should have 100% control over every single decision and that you make around your IT t infrastructure without any gaps. right What that means is you should have all the data that you need in front of you and you should be able to take informed decisions to guide multi-million dollar investment decisions with the highest confidence possible. So that’s what we we focus on. Every single customer that we serve, you know their budgets for IT are in the tens of millions of dollars. So it’s not a small thing. and And by us making that more efficient, we make a big difference in the trajectory of their growth.

Alejandro Cremades: And what about building a fully remote team? you know There’s probably a lot of people that are listening now, having you know distributed teams, maybe not even an office.

Carlos N. Escutia: just

Alejandro Cremades: you know How do you go up about that?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, I know. that’s ah That’s a great question. And actually, you know I would say that one of the reasons why a lot of companies are embracing distributed work in a way, um you know hybrid work, it’s because it’s just cost-effective. right you know You will see this, and you you see this every every day with our customers, or anecdotally, if you talk to other founders, you will know that there are hiring team members in Asia, Latin America, Europe, do things that traditionally the US would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars right ah for that same level of skill. And you know increasingly, organizations are just empowered to do that simply because the tools exist today to enable that. And we ourselves are part of that ecosystem right of a number of solutions out there in the market that enable companies to do this today.

Carlos N. Escutia: The nature of work has shifted dramatically. Its flexibility is demanded by employees, right? And it it just makes sense from an economic standpoint for an organization to embrace that as well. And so that is the reason why no matter how much you hear about this efforts to return to an office, there will always be this remote flexibility, right? It just makes sense from an economic standpoint and from an attraction and retention standpoint ah yeah of ah of of the talent that you need.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then for this as well you know what about adapting to changes you know because right now market is crazy you know coming out of Kobe crazy valuations you know things are shifting. What about adapting to changes. how how How should a founder think about that and also how have you guys gone about that.

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, no. And I think get up going on what I was saying earlier, you know that that change that we have seen in the market really has fueled a lot of this you know flexibility that we’re seeing. yeah So one of the use cases that we see commonly with our customers are Companies in the US primarily that you know are downsizing in the US simply because their costs are significantly high and they need to restructure those costs. And so what they do is that they just hire in lower cost economies. And that’s just the reality right of of the world we will live in.

Carlos N. Escutia: And so you know the the flexibility to adapt to a new world where your skill level has to be on par at a global scale, and you know you need to be competing with the best of the best at that level, you know it’s a big change for a lot of people, especially white collar workers in the US.

Carlos N. Escutia: ah So, you know, you need to really adapt and and and and understand now that, you know, opportunity is everywhere and this applies to companies and to individuals. And, yeah you know, that is what helps you to adapt to whatever, you know, is thrown at you all of a sudden, such as the market you know downturn, right, where you’re just forced to do this. and so a you know, just change and flexibility to change and adapt fast is really what, you know, makes or break anybody. And I’m trying to tie it to this idea of remote work because it’s really what’s fueling what’s happening in today’s world.

Alejandro Cremades: So now, if I was to bring you back in time, let’s say to that moment where you were getting out of the corporate venture you know arm and and going at it as an entrepreneur, let’s say you had the opportunity of having a chat with your younger self and being able to give your younger self one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why, given what you know now?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, that’s a great question. and the The answer would be, you see a lot and you read about a lot, a you know, how do you prove your ideas, right? And how do you get something to market and and and and the most valuable data that you can get is just really being out there in front of prospective customers ah as fast as possible.

Carlos N. Escutia: right? ah And really, you know, sell them an idea and understand what their problems are. We’re trying to figure it out. What are the best possible solutions for those problems that they’re facing? The big disconnect that sometimes happens is that you you think of an idea, oh, this is going to be great. And but you don’t you don’t even know if there’s if if what problem this is specifically solving, right, ah without talking to those potential customers. So The sooner you can get to that point, you know the better. I guess a big difference in connecting it to what we have done is that in my case, you know I was scratching my own itch when I started you know grow work right based on my own experience. so Now you can just bridge that gap by just going directly to where you see the problems that you think you can solve with new technologies and you know really test those ideas out before doing anything else. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time and money ah just to realize that you know but they didn’t even make sense to begin with.

Alejandro Cremades: Absolutely. So Carlos, for the people that are listening, I would love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so?

Carlos N. Escutia: Yeah, you can reach out LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m on both a channels. but Yeah, Carlos is good. Yeah, you know, growwork.com also. Yeah, feel free to reach out and and look, I mean, ultimately, you know, I’m always happy to connect with the with founders who are just getting started or, you know, I myself,

Carlos N. Escutia: I’m part of multiple groups here where we just exchange ideas and you know think about you know problem solving all day every day. right it’s It’s what we do.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. I love it. well Carlos, thank you so much for being on The Dealmaker Show. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us today.

Carlos N. Escutia: Thank you, Alejandro.

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