Startup Announces Series C to Investigate What Happened to Series B
Startup announces new funding round to investigate old funding round. Investors cheer “radical transparency” as money burns again.
JAKARTA — Southeast Asia–based startup Thermocap announced its successful $45 million Series C round, which will be used exclusively to investigate where its entire Series B funding mysteriously went.
The company, which previously described itself as “redefining real-time merchant enablement through ambient commerce layers,” clarified in a press release that it has now pivoted to a new focus: “quantifying strategic financial vaporization at scale.”
“Our Series B wasn’t lost,” explained co-founder and CEO Dimas Raharjo during a press conference. “It was vaporized with intention. We needed to generate insights into how capital behaves when exposed to aggressive headcount growth, underutilized SaaS subscriptions, and experimental billboard placements in the Jakarta flood tunnel.”
The company, which raised $32 million in its 2022 Series B, believes that the funds entered a “post-liquid state” after being rapidly deployed across four unprofitable product lines, a region-wide ambassador program involving micro-influencers, and a brief but passionate attempt to acquire an online marketplace in Thailand.
The new Series C funding will be used to “hire top-tier forensics consultants” and build an AI-powered internal tool called BurnSight, designed to analyze historical cash flows, detect ROI voids, and auto-generate thoughtful LinkedIn posts explaining why “success can’t always be measured.”
Raharjo remains confident. “This is a journey. If anything, we’re the first startup to apply the scientific method to venture burn.”
Investors were quick to praise Thermocap’s honesty, strategic redirection, and courage in the face of basic financial accountability.
“Most startups pretend the money went into ‘growth’ or ‘infrastructure,’” said Amrita Desai, Partner at SpiralPeak Capital, which led the round. “But these guys actually admitted they don’t know where it went. That kind of brutal transparency is exactly what this ecosystem needs.”
Asked whether her fund conducted any due diligence before re-investing, Desai nodded. “We looked at their leadership team. The founder has failed twice before, which makes him highly experienced.”
Desai noted that Thermocap’s roadmap for the next two quarters includes hiring a new CFO, implementing automated approval workflows, and “light touch experimentation with self-awareness.”
She added, “You can’t put a price on operational maturity. But if you could, it’s probably around $45 million.”
Despite still being unable to articulate what the original Series B was meant to achieve, the Thermocap leadership team remains optimistic.
COO Farah Tan confirmed the company had conducted a thorough internal retrospective. “One big takeaway,” she said, “was that when you hire 60 people in a single quarter, you need chairs. That alone burned $140,000. You just don’t realize how expensive ergonomic furniture is until it’s too late.”
Tan also revealed the team had accidentally subscribed to 14 different product analytics tools, none of which had logins beyond the initial free trial. “It’s part of the learning curve,” she said. “Mistakes were made, but those mistakes have incredible storytelling value.”
Thermocap plans to publish a white paper in Q4 titled “The Invisible Funnel: Where Growth and Liquidity Meet in the Void.” The paper will be launched during a three-day offsite at a boutique resort in Bali, with panel discussions on “rethinking accountability” and a closing fireside chat titled “The Burn Rate is the Business Model.”
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