Pulkit Agrawal

I am always amazed when someone discovers whitespace in B2B SaaS that is eligible for pre-seed funding. It's interesting to see that Chiratae Ventures led Pre-Seed round for Pepsales. Pepsales is trying to help B2B SaaS companies improve their sales by creating personalized product demos using AI and ML. The pain point they are trying to address is that most demos don't impress buyers because they tend to be generic and one-size-fits-all. Congrats Ajay Singh and Abhinandan Sahgal! Source: INC42, Entrackr, VCCircle #VentureCapital #B2BSaas

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What Really Makes a Founder-Investor Relationship Work? 💡 Engaged Participation: The best investors don't just attend meetings; they immerse themselves in the startup journey. I recall working on our GTM strategy and facing three tough choices. One investor suggested, "Why not try all three and see what works?" That advice broke down mental barriers and led us to new opportunities. 🤝 Building Trust: Trust grows through genuine, agenda-free conversations, empathy, and a true interest in personal connections. I genuinely appreciate discovering the person behind the purpose. 🗣️ Authenticity and Transparency: Absolute openness is crucial. Discussing dealbreakers and having tough conversations early on leads to smoother sailing later. 🌐 Extending Networks: Aligned investors broaden a startup's reach, introducing key partners and customers, strengthening the network. At FEBE Ventures, we aim to be the first call founders make when challenges arise. We take pride in being trusted advisors to the entrepreneurs we work with. How do you think investors can make a meaningful difference in your journey? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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What if there's a way to raise millions without relying on #VC funding? Aakash Shah's journey with Wyndly (YC W21) proves it's not just possible—it's potentially game-changing for your startup. From leveraging customer prepayments to learning finance tricks from restaurant owners, Aakash's story is a masterclass in creative capital strategies. He's turned conventional wisdom on its head, showing that sometimes the best funding doesn't come from Sand Hill Road → Leverage Your Customers "How Annual Plans Became Our Secret Funding Weapon" → Learn from Other Industries "Restaurant Owners Taught Me More About Finance Than VCs" → Rethink Your Cash Flow "The Power of Negative Cash Conversion in Healthcare" → Explore Alternative Financing "Why We Chose Revenue-Based Financing Over Traditional VC" → Optimize Your Balance Sheet "It's Not Just About P&L: The Balance Sheet Secret VCs Don't Tell You" → Negotiate with Vendors "How We Turned Our Suppliers into Unofficial Investors" → Think Beyond Software Margins "Applying SaaS Strategies to a Non-SaaS Business" → Build a Support Network "Why Fellow Founders Are Your Best Fundraising Resource" → Stay Flexible "The Day We Realized VC Wasn't Our Only Option" From Y Combinator to creative financing, Aakash's journey shows that success isn't just about raising VC money—it's about smart capital strategy, relationships, and knowing when to pivot. Remember: If you can avoid fundraising, you should do that too. Every business is different, but there are always alternatives if you're creative enough! Check out my full interview with Aakash Shah on Episode 51 of Fundraising Demystified.

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What are the war stories around raising right now? Here are just a few of the things we're seeing across the board, in the conversations we have with founders on a daily basis as CFOs. ➡️ A deal isn't done till it's done - Despite having a term sheet in front of you, time to close / time to cash in bank has anecdotally risen quite considerably. However long you think it's going to take, add 3 months and then expect it to still drag further. ➡️ Down rounds, flat rounds and all that jazz - I remember last year talking to founders who were (naively) thinking that if they held out for a while, they would see a return to some of the multiples and valuations we were seeing in the early 2020s. Clearly that ship has sailed (unless you're an AI startup), especially post Seed, so founders need to be on top of their cap table modelling. ➡️ A bridge too far - Of course, not everyone is even getting to a priced round, which means that founders are shoring up capital with bridge rounds, often on convertibles or SAFEs with the hope that they will hit the milestones they need to get to a more traditional round down the track. It's all about the discount and the cap at this point. ➡️ Control, control, control - Apart from the obvious inclusion of liquiditation preferences (which have always existed in 'later' stage financings, we're seeing a move by investors to either have more control via board seats, or via reserved matters - i.e. what founders must get investor consent to do. ➡️ The game has changed - Growth will never fall out of favour, it is necessary for the current model of VC to make any kind of sense, however what has changed is the balance expected between scale and efficiency. It's no longer enough to just grow like the clappers, you've got to do it in a way that preserves capital and drives the business towards profitability much sooner than was ever the case before. What are others seeing in the market, let's help founders everywhere ensure they're prepared.

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I often get DM's and comments from founders that something I shared has been super useful to them and helped them wrap their head around some gnarly problem they were grappling with. Something as simple as how I validated an idea initially, what to ignore when you are too early, how we hired at zoko etc. If you were starting your company today or working on an early stage one, what would you like me to talk about?  Drop it in the comments. I'll either reply in comments or write more in-depth posts over the coming weeks, considering your input. Your input will help shape what I share, so don't hesitate to ask about any aspect of starting a company you're curious about.

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Secludy uses differential privacy & synthetic datasets that mimic source data to train AI models on your most valuable data – without leaking PII. Translation? They build the safest, most private way to train AI for your user base. Excited to support Ben Cerchio and Mingze He,Ph.D. on this mission.

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I recently came across an article on founder coaching that really struck a chord with me. As a Venture Partner at Seedcamp, I spend a lot of time working closely with founders, helping them build out the right teams, fine-tune their products, craft their go-to-market strategies, and figure out how to operationalize and scale their businesses. These are all critical areas of focus, and they often involve making big, external changes. But one thing that doesn’t always change as quickly is the founder’s mindset. It’s not uncommon for founders to keep approaching problems the way they always have—after all, it worked in the past, right? But the reality of startups is that things are constantly shifting, and what worked two months ago may not be the right move now. Running a 20-person team the same way you ran a 6-person team, for example, often leads to issues. Sometimes it’s because founders feel tied to a vision they’ve sold to investors, employees, or customers, and they don’t want to backtrack, even when the evidence is telling them otherwise. Other times, they’ve been inspired by another founder’s success story or advice, and they try to replicate it—even when it’s clear the same approach isn’t working for them. In many cases, founders focus so much on fixing external problems—hiring the right designer, bringing in an operations person, or improving their sales team—that they miss the opportunity to look inward and consider how they might need to evolve alongside their business. As startups grow, the challenges start to shift from solving specific problems to scaling yourself as a leader. Founder mode might feel heroic, but it’s also a fast track to burnout for both the founder and their team. That’s why it’s essential to not only work on your product, processes, and culture but also on yourself. Sometimes, the roadblocks are coming from within. That’s why I’m such a strong advocate of founders investing in coaching. It can be a game-changer when it comes to navigating these challenges.

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HNY! Hope everyone had a great break. Quiet on here as head down. Such a lot of exciting things coming up: - More Tools for all scaleups to improve their growth trajectory - More Founders using VenturePath to secure their Series A-B investment rounds - More VCs joining VenturePath's VC Network - More Events (including a VC dinner for 50 on the 22nd and SuperScalers female founders event on the 30th) - More Partners joining our scaleup support ecosystem - More Data to publish on 2024 VC trends for the UK ScaleUp Investment Mission Busy January! We'll share more on these when we have a minute... If you can play a part, as a founder, VC, investor, partner, sponsor, data provider etc., there's still room for a conversation or coffee with you though 😉

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A big question I consistently get from early stage founders - is taking VC cash versus building bootstrapped. While I say out loud everytime that I’d choose latter or take way less capital intentionally if I were to do it again, I can’t deny the fact that being part of the VC ecosystem gave me a lot too. Being part of the VC ecosystem means: - you ‘might’ get lucky & get that 1 (or two if you’re luckier!) investor who becomes a mentor / friend for life - there is a constant dose of adrenaline-rushing inspiration as you build alongside incredible peers across diff industries - exposure to a lot more anecdotal learning re > building differentiated value-prop products, hacking distribution innovatively, knowing when is the right time to layer in HR and Legal and other systems in the growth story - meeting a lot of folks, as is evident in the high-pressure-game, that helps you build “a thick skin” much early on ;) It ain’t for everybody. It needn’t be for everybody. It can be very very harsh, super highs and super lows. But it’s fun too once you “get it” :-)

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Founders, don’t make this common mistake early on (#4 in series): Rely too heavily on referrals without any process. Every founder knows referrals are the holy grail of hiring. Who doesn’t want a warm intro to a strong candidate that comes vouched for? So founders ask their team for referrals anytime a new role opens up. Maybe they’ll get a few leads. But without structure, referrals stall: • Current employees get distracted by their day-to-day. • They forget to tap their networks. • High-quality references dry up quick. Your new goal: Systematize referrals. • Set aside dedicated time every quarter to re-engage your team on referrals. Remind them of open roles and relevant skill sets you seek. • Provide clear guidelines on who and how to refer. For example, share ideal candidate criteria and specifics on where they should introduce you. • Incentivize referrals with gift cards or team rewards. And track submissions to notify when a referee gets hired. Putting a structured referral program in place reduces ad-hoc asks and motivates your team to proactively tap their trusted contacts. You’ll see candidate quality and hiring velocity increase overnight. P.S. This is post #4 in my series uncovering common founder hiring mistakes that burn cash. Follow me to catch the rest of the series.

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🚨 The BIGGEST problem scaleups face when pivoting? It’s not lack of ideas. It’s the inability to align the entire team around ONE crystal-clear direction. 👉 Teams waste months debating features. 👉 Founders grapple with mixed feedback from investors. 👉 Customers? They're left confused by inconsistent messaging. Sound familiar? This is where the Startup Lean Canvas shines. 🌟 Unlike traditional business plans, the Lean Canvas is a 1-page blueprint that forces clarity. It aligns your product, customers, and revenue streams with your ultimate mission—FAST. Case in point: 👉 Airbnb: From "air mattresses in apartments" to a global travel giant. 👉 Grab: From ride-hailing to a full-blown super app. Both used variations of the Lean Canvas to refine their pivots and align their vision. 💡 What makes it powerful? 👉You can map your pivot in 30 minutes or less. 👉It highlights key risks so you don’t waste time and money. 👉Best of all? It’s ridiculously simple to share with your team or investors. __________________ Want to see how Airbnb and Grab used the Startup Lean Canvas? 🚀 Plus, get your hands on an editable template you can use today? 1. Like this post 2. Drop a comment saying “Lean Canvas” and I’ll send it your way! 3. Make sure you send a connection request! __________________ Let’s make your pivot the pivot that scales. 🙌 __________________ I'm Neha Divanji 👋 Click my name + follow 🔔 To optimise your marketing and product growth, book a call with me at growthspin.co.uk

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In less than 3 months of running Youform we have received 3 funding offers, that too from reputable angel investors. But we have to politely turn them down as we have decided to run it as a bootstrapped company (at least for the foreseeable future). The rationale behind this is that we don't want any artificial growth pressure from our investors. Of course, Youform is growing fast. Our revenue has seen 154% growth since the last month all with social media marketing, SEO and word of mouth. But the pressure of growth that comes with someone else's money is never sustainable. Youform is growing well and profitable. The operating expenses is less than 5% of the revenue so definitely doesn't make sense to go for any external funding. Hoping to grow it all bootstrapped and with a lean team for as long as possible.

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This is a good post on why start-ups (& scale-ups!) should get themselves an 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱. If you would like to find out more about how your business could benefit from an #advisoryboard then let's grab a coffee. ☕ VJMC Consulting Limited #advisory #growth #ideas #board

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Why Great Operators Often Make Terrible Founders Last week, while recording the Skip Podcast with Shreyas Doshi (https://lnkd.in/gja2PeuZ), I shared an insight that explains why some of the most successful operators struggle as founders, while others with seemingly less impressive track records thrive. It all comes down to two pens on your desk: black and red. 🖊️ The Red Pen Operator: - Excels at refining existing ideas - Masters the art of strategic improvement - Thrives in scaling environments - Commands high compensation - Builds on existing momentum 🖋️ The Black Pen Creator: - Faces the blank whiteboard fearlessly - Embraces the vulnerability of first drafts - Generates original hypotheses - Builds without existing tailwinds - Creates their own momentum Here's the career-defining insight: Your success as an operator might actually be inversely correlated with your potential as a founder. Why? Because large companies pay a premium for red pen skills. The higher you climb, the more you're rewarded for your ability to spot flaws, refine strategies, and optimize existing systems. You become masterful at surfing waves – but founding requires you to create the wave itself. A personal example: I've watched a brilliant CPO struggle mightily as a founder, while a "less polished" product manager built a $100M business. The difference? The CPO had mastered the red pen but feared the blank whiteboard. The PM embraced the messy first draft. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵: If you find yourself frustrated in large organizations because you prefer creating from scratch rather than refining others' work – you might have the founder gene. 🔑 Key Takeaway: Your success as a founder doesn't depend on your ability to perfect existing systems. It depends on your comfort with imperfect creation. Want to dive deeper into this framework? Join Shreyas and me as we unpack the complete matrix for operator-to-founder transitions. Full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gAdgtm3x 💡 Follow me for more insights on the intersection of product leadership and founding success.

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At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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*Advisory Board 2.0* - Less equity, more accountability. Increasingly over the past couple of years, I have seen founders who are building a new kind of advisory board. It starts with identifying a group of people who fit three distinct criteria: 1. Expert-level advisors 2. Potential customers 3. Angel investors Ideally, they are all three. These founders are going out and recruiting dozens of advisors and approaching them with a new kind of offering: - Equity in the form of 200 - 5,000 shares per advisor. Relative to the 10-15 million outstanding, that might be 10,000 total shares for the advisory board, or .1% of the company rather than .25-1% for each advisor - Access to WhatsApp or Telegram group with community of their peers - Monthly or quarterly advisory board calls to share product feedback, industry news, company progress, etc - Access to invest in the company, sometimes at a discount to a future round - Kickbacks or referral bonuses in the form of cash or additional equity for referring new customers, employees, or investors - Ability to run a free or discounted proof of concept as a customer Read the rest of the post and examples of how this works in practice on th Is weeks’ Monday Morning Meeting. Link in comments. #founders #vc Antler

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The most innovative ideas often come from founders who’ve been overlooked for too long. BBG Ventures, co-founded by Nisha Dua and Susan Lyne, was one of the first funds to put a stake in the ground and back female and diverse founders at pre-seed and seed stages in 2014. They knew these founders were uniquely positioned to build the future. Fast forward to today, BBG Ventures has led investments in over 100 female-led companies across three funds. 100% of their latest fund’s companies have a female founder, and 70% have a founder of color. BBG Ventures focuses on sectors where change is overdue: → Healthcare → Future of Work → Fintech → Climate → Consumer Tech They write checks from $500K to $2M, backing founders who are solving real-world problems through B2B and B2C models. Their portfolio includes powerhouse brands like Zola (loved it and used it for my own wedding!) and The Mom Project. If your company is tackling big challenges and you think BBG Ventures could be the right partner, contact them today to share your pitch. _____________________ 👋🏻 Hi there, welcome! ✨ I'm Sarah. I help women founders develop winning business models, gain market traction, and secure funding through my FundHER accelerator program. As a woman founder, follow me here on LinkedIn for insights and support to help you launch, grow, and fund your startup.

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I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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