Fund/Build/Scale Walter Thompson

For this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I interviewed Dipanwita Das, CEO and co-founder of Sorcero, about the journey of taking an AI startup from research to reality. She shared her experience of interviewing more than 300 people to shape Sorcero's product and technical requirements, as well as strategies for aligning customer needs with product development. We also discussed the challenges of building a capable team, fundraising, and the process she and her co-founders used to transform their thesis into a marketable product.
[1:55] How Sorcero’s co-founders connected and launched in 2018 (before the AI boom)
[5:31] Why she interviewed 300+ people to gather insights before Sorcero started building
[6:21] "R&D for us sort of is in two halves."
[8:57] Building a team with the right balance of skills and entrepreneurial spirit
[10:52] "Someone… suggested we use the frame, 'minimum lovable product.'"
[12:20] "My TAM calculation was a bit amateur in the early years."
[16:28] How Sorcero managed R&D while building trust with early customers
[19:14] Series A milestones
[21:44] "I zeroed in on a number of roles" in hundreds of customer discovery interviews
[26:14] How they determined whether Sorcero would be a horizontal or vertical product
[29:31] If you have a cohesive cognitive framework and market proof, you can fundraise
[32:20] Why AI academics/researchers should cultivate "a customer-facing mindset"
[37:46] When making early hires, "you need a builder persona with an incredible drive."
[41:15] The one question she asks in every interview
[42:25] Her advice for AI founders who are trying to raise funds right now
Links
SorceroDipanwita Das, CEO
Walter Bender, CSO
Richard Graves, CCO

What is a minimum loveable product? [Product School]
Funding alert: AI startup Sorcero raised a (mid-pandemic) $3.5M bridge round
AI startup Sorcero secures $10M for language intelligence platform
How Sorcero is improving the accessibility of scientific literature
Thanks for listening!
Fund/Build/Scale is sponsored by Mayfield and Securiti.

Going from zero to $1M in annual recurring revenue is worth celebrating, but it’s no guarantee that your startup is on a path to success.
How long did it take to reach this milestone? How much did you spend to acquire each customer, and how many have renewed or extended their contracts?
When it comes to sales, repeatability equals success. To learn more about the tactics startups use to reach $1 million ARR (and beyond) I interviewed Rehan Jalil, CEO of Securiti.
Drawing from his experience as a three-time founder, we talked about setting up an initial sales motion, understanding and validating the problem you're solving, focusing on a specific audience to hone your value proposition, and building trust with early customers.
Episode breakdown:
“Before we even get to the revenue, it actually is important to understand what problem you're trying to solve.” [2:10]
“The only metric is repeatability.” [4:55]
“So we coined the term ‘privacy ops’… we wrote a book on it.” [7:35]
“Teams have to be very much in sync, which means information has to flow.” [10:39]
“By the time you get to MVP, you better have refined this thing. [12:40]
“Before you bring in sales teams, it’s important that you actually have the content for them.” [15:34]
“The bar is very high within the enterprise, and it takes much longer.” [18:29]
“If you don’t start with conviction, don’t do it.” [21:41]
“Find people who have a common interest on the problem that you're trying to solve.” [26:08]
“If they feel like you helped them… they can actually be advocates.” [28:14]
“Just putting things freemium out there doesn’t mean people are going to adopt it.” [30:41]
“Prioritize finding a viable use case and viable product strategy vs. rushing into something.” [32:36]
Thanks for listening! Follow Fund/Build/Scale on LinkedIn and Substack.

Successful entrepreneurs must translate their personal visions into something tangible enough to attract employees, investors, and eventually, customers. 
There are best practices for product management and software pricing, but how do you make yourself persuasive (and authentic) enough to convince someone else to risk their time and money on your idea?
I interviewed May Habib (CEO and co-founder, Writer) and Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder, Captions) to learn how they use a mix of hard and soft skills to maintain a clear and strategic vision that informs everything from recruiting to GTM strategy. 
We also discussed methods for finding investors who understand your space, building a team, and why “rarely is the first idea the right idea.”
Here’s a full episode breakdown:
Part 1: May Habib, CEO and co-founder, Writer
"This was going to be just a much more interesting product." [03:27]
Writer's original founding "team is pretty together from early days." [5:45]
"In 2020, I don't remember spending a lot of time on the AI behind the AI." [6:11]
When May recognized that she’d connected with investors who shared her vision [8:30]
"The benefit of the full-stack approach is really becoming pretty obvious for people who are spending time with enterprise customers." [12:11]
"I don't see myself as a storyteller, I see myself as decent at picking up signal from noise and explaining that to people." [13:03]
"I do care a lot about design, about brand.... it's always been a very visual company." [16:07]
"If I was just meeting somebody, they got a slightly different deck in the first meeting." [19:06]
"Even ‘til the Series A, I think I looked down on people who were active on LinkedIn." [20:03]
"I think enterprises are getting fatigued." [23:01]
"If it's AI, show, don't tell, because the capabilities are so wild that you can really blow people away." [26:42]
Part 2: Gaurav Misra, CEO and co-founder, Captions
"We want to come up with a lot of different ideas in this space and what gets us excited." [33:32]
"We talked to a lot of people to help solve that creation problem that we were trying to go after." [36:34]
Why social media is "a really good way to actually test startup ideas" [38:20]
Investors were enthusiastic about shifting strategy, but "the hard part was to convince yourself." [39:55]
"It's really important to have an investor who understands the space inside and out." [41:29]
"The hardest part has been, what do we actually want to do, and what did we see actually working?" [44:35]
"I don't think of myself as a natural storyteller. I think it's something that I had to learn a little bit more of." [47:00]
Why Gaurav is still Caption's 'chief storyteller'" [49:42]
The importance of aligning your overall vision with PMF [51:16]
"As the company grows, the vision does become more and more crystal clear" [52:10]
"Once people try the alternate solution, they should never want to go back to the original." [54:30]

In part two, Armon explained why he initially resisted investor advice to raise a Series A and spoke frankly about the challenges involved with stepping up into a leadership role, which led to some interesting talk about overcoming impostor syndrome, something a lot of us can relate to.
Part 2:
show Series A investors market opportunities you've already validated [1:51]
focusing on enterprise sales from the beginning was a winning strategy [3:40]
"we had an enterprise sales option straight from the beginning' [5:21]
why he hired a full-time salesperson as soon as Coalesce exited stealth [6:52]
how he connected with co-founder Satish Jayanthi [7:22]
coping with imposter syndrome and overcoming the pressure to perform [12:18]
raising a larger Series A than planned led to better outcomes [14:23]
avoid talking to investors until you're ready to raise — then move fast [16:51]
candid advice for anyone who's interviewing with an early-stage AI startup [18:55

I interviewed Coalesce CEO and co-founder Armon Petrossian in February 2024 to talk about his company's journey from seed stage to Series A. I had no idea he was already working on his next round: just a few weeks after we recorded this interview, Coalesce announced a $50M Series B.
To help me prepare, his team shared their slightly redacted Series A pitch deck, which was immensely helpful. I'd intended to make this a mini-episode, but there was so much here, I decided to break it up into two parts.
Part 1:
why building in stealth was the right call for Coalesce [1:39]
guiding principles for who should — and should not — build in stealth [4:22]
how to manage customer discovery without revealing too much [6:50]
why they used their seed round "to build out the team as quickly as possible" [10:12]
midway through 2022, fundraising dynamics "changed radically" [11:33]
when investors pushed for a Series A, "I was like, that's crazy" [13:05]
starting up in San Francisco when you don't have industry connections [15:52]

I interviewed Laura Bisesto (global head of policy and privacy at Nextdoor) in January 2024 to get her advice for AI startups that are just starting out. We talked about compliance, how to recognize when you need in-house help, and the overall importance of planning for worst case scenarios.
She also had some thoughts for rolling out new AI-powered features, creating user advisory boards, and navigating a patchwork of state, federal and international laws.
Here’s a breakdown of our conversation:
“You don’t have to be an ethicist to start an AI ethics program..” (2:44)
don’t wait for lawyers: work on safety and trust from Day 1 (4:44)
how Nextdoor developed and launched its generative AI principles (7:21)
evaluate and reduce risk before rolling out AI-powered features (9:05)
why product teams should oversee risk management (10:54)
"the regulatory environment is evolving" (12:25)
the Biden administration's October 2023 executive order on AI (15:04)
how to position your startup for compliance with future regulation (18:32)
trickery and a lack of transparency can lead to expensive mistakes (22:22)
be careful when sharing user data between different jurisdictions (23:45)
the most common trust, safety and compliance mistakes AI founders make (25:23)
Fund/Build/Scale is sponsored by Mayfield and Securiti.