For the final episode of Fund/Build/Scale's first season, I sat down with repeat founders Dheeraj Pandey (Nutanix, DevRev) and Manish Chandra (Kaboodle, Poshmark). For more than an hour, we discussed some of the fundamental challenges founders must overcome if they hope to be successful over the long term. Some of the takeaways are below, but our conversation went well beyond basic best practices. We talked about how they learned to embrace paradoxical values, overcome feelings of isolation, stay in close touch with customers, and perhaps most critically, adapt to challenges. As Dheeraj said, "building a startup is a mental game more than anything else." I'd like to thank everyone who's backed Fund/Build/Scale, starting with Navin Chaddha and Kamini Ramani at Mayfield Fund and Rehan Jalil at Securiti. They've been great sponsors, and I'm deeply appreciative of their support! Season 2 starts soon, and I don't want you to miss an episode, so please subscribe!
We partnered with Walter Thompson, former TechCrunch editor to create Fund/Build/Scale as a podcast to provide actionable advice to ideation stage AI founders. The final episode of our 10 part series features Manish Chandra and Dheeraj Pandey, two Mayfield serial entrepreneurs who have built iconic consumer and enterprise companies - Poshmark and Nutanix. Their evergreen learnings should be a great guide to founders who are starting their journey: 1. Prioritize reducing friction from every process. 2. Embrace a design-first mentality from Day Zero. 3.It’s tricky, but you need to find the right balance between confidence and humility. 4. You are the face of the company, so “keep it 💯.” 5. Idea-stage founders have more freedom than CEOs of public companies. 6. Building a strong personal network is part of your job. Listen to podcast here: https://lnkd.in/esgqH7y3
