Venturing with Vishesh — Startup Founder Interviews on SaaS, AI, Fundraising & Venture Capital.

Vishesh Duggar
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Venturing with Vishesh is a weekly founder interview podcast hosted by Vishesh Duggar (5× founder, ex-CTO at Vamstar). Each week Vishesh talks to SaaS founders, AI builders, and venture capitalists from the US, Europe and India — unpacking what almost broke their companies and how they turned it around. Real fundraising stories, GTM playbooks, product-market fit lessons, and the unglamorous side of building a startup. Guests backed by Y Combinator, Benchmark, a16z, and Sequoia. New episodes every week.

  1. 5d ago

    #73 How to Fill a Room With 2,000 People on Zero Budget

    # How to Fill a Room With 2,000 People on Zero Budget## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Vasily Alekseenko, Founder of Rare Founders. He started Rare Founders when his own fundraise stalled, has welcomed more than 25,000 founders and investors through its doors, and is now building SoPhy to help people keep the relationships that matter.## Episode SummaryLondon has 200+ startup events in a single ten-day window, and many of them promise investors who never show up. This episode is a playbook for filling a room with zero budget: free venues earned through partnerships, 60-second pitches, and formats built so nobody gets stuck in a dead conversation. Then it goes further: why 1,000 real relationships beat 13,000 LinkedIn connections, and what it takes to measure the difference.## Key Points- 🍺 How a zero-budget founder booked a free venue for 250 people in two minutes- 💦 Why founders get 60 seconds on stage, and a water gun if they go over- 🚪 The format trick that lets you leave any awkward networking conversation- 💸 Why family offices avoid founders, and the event that got them into the room anyway- 🤝 The partnership rule that gets venues, catering and speakers without paying- 📉 Why a big LinkedIn network can hurt you when you ask for an intro- 🤖 How AI raised user expectations so high that a manual MVP no longer works## Important Links- You can reach Vasily Alekseenko at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alekseenkovv/- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Check out Rare Founders at https://www.rarefounders.com- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction0:58 - What Rare Founders is: 25,000+ founders and investors in two and a half years1:47 - The failed fundraise that started it all3:28 - Why paid pitch slots with no investors in the room felt like a scam4:22 - The pub with a no-show organiser and a free venue for 250 people6:37 - Going full-time and launching London's Largest Demo Day8:52 - Why events are hard to monetise, and the 40+ media partners behind them11:35 - Inside open mic pitching: one minute, raised hands and water guns14:57 - Breaks that let you exit an awkward conversation16:28 - When a volunteer copied the whole format17:28 - What San Francisco events get wrong, and right18:23 - Why UK investors avoid founder events23:49 - Family offices vs VCs: who wants to meet whom25:36 - Moving from open mics to technical and sector events28:42 - How the events business pays the bills, and why it is not the moonshot30:52 - The channels that drive traffic: partnerships, content and word of mouth34:08 - The pub lesson: what a real partnership looks like38:23 - The LinkedIn problem: 13,000 connections, 95% strangers40:57 - Social physics: why well-connected founders reach Series B43:07 - SoPhy's AI agent for your inbox, calendar and WhatsApp49:00 - Can you measure trust between two people?55:32 - Where SoPhy is now, and why launch is limited57:14 - SoPhy vs Boardy and Instinct59:31 - How AI raised user expectations and killed the manual MVP1:03:47 - Using Rare Founders events as SoPhy's go-to-market1:05:14 - SoPhy's one-minute pitchTopic: Startup Community Building

    #73 How to Fill a Room With 2,000 People on Zero Budget

  2. Oct 7

    #72 AI's Real Bottleneck Is Not Chips. It Is the 100-Year-Old Grid.

    # AI's Real Bottleneck Is Not Chips. It Is the 100-Year-Old Grid.## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Vikhyat Chaudhry, Co-Founder at Buzz Solutions. He's Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy and just published a book on why the power grid, not chips, is AI's real bottleneck.## Episode SummaryChips get blamed for every AI bottleneck, but the real constraint is a 100-year-old power grid that takes seven to nine years to build a single new transmission line. This episode breaks down why AI data centers now behave like spiky, unpredictable loads utilities can't model ahead of time, and why a 90% accurate AI model is still only 20% of the job of actually fixing the grid.## Key Points- 🔥 Why AI's real bottleneck has nothing to do with chips- ⚡ Why AI data centers made the grid's load growth jump nearly 6x almost overnight- 🌡️ What a thermal camera on a drone can catch before a transformer blows up- 🏆 How a startup beat GE, Siemens, and Schneider Electric by a 58-point accuracy gap- 🤖 The term he coined to fix AI's biggest misconception in the power industry- 💻 Why "Claude generated it" is not an excuse for bad code in production- 📖 What a college drone project measuring Delhi's air quality has to do with any of this## Important Links- You can reach Vikhyat Chaudhry at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikhyatchaudhry/- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Checkout Buzz Solutions at https://www.buzzsolutions.com- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction0:13 - What Buzz Solutions does for power utilities2:21 - Why Buzz stays software, not drone hardware3:18 - Writing "Powering Intelligence"5:50 - Gigawatt-scale load swings from AI data centers8:40 - Where new data centers are popping up across the US10:01 - What thermal imaging catches before a transformer fails11:14 - Inside the PowerAI multimodal data platform13:23 - Why there's no public dataset for critical infrastructure AI15:15 - Landing the first utility dataset16:38 - The Delhi drone project that measured an AQI over 50017:36 - Beating GE and Siemens for New York Power Authority19:15 - What makes a utility RFP so grueling21:37 - Finding an RFP partner through Google22:19 - Building a partner program that actually works23:38 - The biggest misconception about AI model accuracy25:54 - Rules for AI-generated code on the engineering team27:33 - Scaling code review with CodeRabbit31:45 - Buzz Solutions is hiring, and where to find the bookTopic: AI Grid Inspection

    #72 AI's Real Bottleneck Is Not Chips. It Is the 100-Year-Old Grid.

  3. Sep 30

    #71 What This CTO Checks Before He Merges AI Code

    # What This CTO Checks Before He Merges AI Code## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Michael Bromley, CTO & Co-Founder at Vendure. He started Vendure as a solo open-source project in 2018, and today he no longer writes code: he runs parallel AI agents and a review agent called Nigel.## Episode SummaryCode is no longer scarce, so an engineer's value moves to review, architecture and taste. This episode goes inside a real agent workflow: an orchestrator session that splits Linear issues into parallel lanes, agents that coordinate over Slack, and a one-file review agent that beats a paid tool. It also asks what that shift does to open-source licensing and to the junior engineer's career path.## Key Points- 🤖 Why a single markdown file in a GitHub Action out-reviews CodeRabbit- 🧵 How two engineers stop their agents from colliding: let the agents talk to each other on Slack- 📜 The one thing worth writing in your AGENTS.md (and why most of it is wasted context)- ⚖️ Why an MIT-to-GPLv3 license change made sense in 2024 and makes less sense now- 🎁 The paid feature Vendure gave away for free, and why it is too late to take it back- ✍️ Why a CTO who lets AI write all his code still refuses to let it write his posts- 🎓 What a junior engineer should do when AI does every junior task better## Important Links- You can reach Michael Bromley at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-bromley-ab1704156- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Checkout Vendure at https://vendure.io- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction1:33 - What Vendure does for B2B commerce2:13 - From a family art-supply shop to a solo open-source project3:55 - Why Magento, Shopware and WooCommerce were not enough6:41 - From AI skeptic to fully AI-pilled8:22 - Should companies still hire junior engineers?10:38 - The skills that still matter when AI writes the code12:46 - What to put in AGENTS.md to make a codebase agent-ready14:47 - MIT to GPLv3: does licensing matter when code is not scarce?17:58 - How an open-source company makes money19:17 - Michael's dev setup: orchestrators, sub-agents and Linear21:38 - Agents that coordinate with each other over Slack23:20 - Nigel, the review agent that beats CodeRabbit24:58 - The newest change: Codex as the orchestrator28:32 - The channels that bring Vendure customers29:25 - The feature Vendure should have charged for30:52 - Superpower and weakness: taste vs. marketing33:43 - What works on LinkedIn for a developer35:33 - Where to find Michael and Vendure37:11 - Why he still writes his own postsTopic: AI Code Review

    #71 What This CTO Checks Before He Merges AI Code

  4. Sep 18

    #70 Your AI Agent Does Not Need an API. It Needs a Login. | Furqan Kidwai

    # Your AI Agent Does Not Need an API. It Needs a Login.## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Furqan Kidwai, Co-Founder & CEO of Plouton AI, which builds AI finance co-workers for mid-market CFO teams. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree who started his career building credit-risk models at Deloitte, he explains why his agents log in instead of integrating.## Episode SummaryMid-market finance teams do not lack tools. They lose days copying data between them, because most of their ERPs and bank portals have no API. This conversation is about AI agents that log in like a person and finish 10 days of back-office work in an hour, and what it takes to sell automation where every click must be provable.## Key Points- 🔐 Why the API-first automation wave skipped most mid-market finance teams- 🧾 The audit trail that lets an AI agent touch the books without keeping the data- 🤖 How an AI agent gets past MFA prompts the same way a new hire does- 🔀 The outbound pivot that turned a would-be competitor into a sales channel- 🎙️ The webinar playbook that fills a CFO pipeline, and what has to come first- 📉 Why a fintech with 26,000 customers still had to shut down- 🧭 Services as a software: why this AI company will not call itself SaaS## Important Links- You can reach Furqan Kidwai at https://www.linkedin.com/in/furqankarimkidwai- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Checkout Plouton AI at https://plouton.co- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction0:07 - From theatre and computer science to Deloitte credit-risk models1:33 - The grandma pitch: what Plouton AI actually does2:15 - Copilot vs co-executor: agents that finish the work4:47 - Why API-first tools miss mid-market finance teams6:33 - Browser agents in the cloud, like a remote employee7:44 - Handling MFA prompts and session timeouts8:58 - An audit trail without data retention, plus on-prem10:09 - From a 100-person consultancy to services as a software11:22 - The channels that bring in CFO buyers11:50 - The webinar playbook: credibility comes first14:08 - YPay: 26,000 customers, a macro shift, and shutting down16:16 - His founder superpower: staying close to customers17:01 - The pivot to selling through fractional CFO firms18:09 - The founder lesson: stay positive, grow your surface area19:22 - The one product he can't live without20:26 - Where to find Furqan and Plouton AI

    #70 Your AI Agent Does Not Need an API. It Needs a Login. | Furqan Kidwai

  5. Sep 1

    #69 Why Founders Underprice — From Someone Who Priced for 8 Years

    ## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Gregor Biljardt, CEO of Mondrio and a former Simon-Kucher pricing lead who spent roughly eight years pricing startups before building an agentic pricing platform. He's seen exactly where founders leave money on the table — and why the AI era just rewrote the rules.## Episode SummaryPricing is one of the highest-leverage levers a founder has, yet most set it once on gut and never touch it again. The bigger shift: AI has turned pricing from a static, annual exercise into a living system that has to move as fast as the product ships — and the seat-based models most teams default to can quietly erode your margins the moment agents start doing the work.## Key Points- 🔥 The one-sentence realization that made him walk away from an 8-year pricing career- 💡 Why founders keep undercharging — and the healthy sign that you're priced right- 🎯 The margin trap that punishes you for shipping better AI- 🚀 Why copying OpenAI's $20 price tag might just be copying someone's guess- 🧭 The pricing move most founders skip at Series A — and pay for later- 💰 What to always ask for before you hand a customer a discount- ⚙️ Who should actually own pricing when you're pre-seed to Series A## Important Links- You can reach Gregor Biljardt at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorbiljardt- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Checkout Mondrio at https://mondrio.io- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction0:10 - Why he left 8 years of pricing consulting to build Mondrio1:46 - "You can't do pricing with a report": pricing as a living system2:45 - Pricing moves that matter at pre-seed, seed, and Series A4:46 - Why founders undercharge and leave money on the table8:45 - Copying competitor pricing: the $20/$100/$200 trap11:09 - When is it too early to obsess over pricing?13:30 - How to price AI when agents, not seats, do the work15:15 - Outcome-based pricing: when it actually works16:42 - Why replacing seats with AI can cut your own revenue18:33 - Usage-based pricing and the predictability objection21:22 - Fair-use policies and the million-dollar-bill churn24:34 - Pricing is cross-functional: engineering vs sales blind spots30:41 - Discounting: always ask something back33:43 - The hidden work behind "simple" pricing35:29 - Who owns pricing from pre-seed to Series A37:44 - Changing pricing often without confusing customers42:41 - Mondrio's challenges: mindsets, services, and hiring49:06 - Roles Mondrio is hiring for in SF and Amsterdam50:32 - Book recommendation and where to find Gregor

    #69 Why Founders Underprice — From Someone Who Priced for 8 Years

  6. Aug 20

    #68 How to Land Press With Zero Journalist Connections | Startup PR | Kathy Wang

    # How to Land Press With Zero Journalist Connections## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Kathy Wang, Co-Founder at Press Club. She's an ex-Dropbox designer who built a 10,000-person audience before she had a product, and now lands founders in Forbes, TechCrunch, and Axios entirely through cold outreach, without knowing a single journalist.## Episode SummaryLanding top-tier press has nothing to do with knowing journalists. It's a repeatable cold-outreach system that surfaces the ~200 reporters most likely to say yes and pitches each one a story worth their time. The real multiplier underneath it is distribution you build in public before you ever have a product, plus the discipline to post what inspires and educates instead of streaming your struggles.## Key Points- 🔥 She quit her job a week after one conference talk, with no idea, no co-founder, and nothing lined up- 💡 The 'classic' build-in-public advice that quietly kills your engagement on LinkedIn- 🎯 Why an AI-written cold pitch out-converts the same email after a founder edits it by hand- 🚀 The cold-outreach response rate everyone accepts as normal, and the number her AI agent hits instead- 🧭 Forbes bought him credibility; a niche outlet got him 10x the revenue. Which one you actually need- 📰 A six-day pitch-to-published campaign, and the three boxes you must check to be newsworthy- 🎤 The reason most founders can't get press: they have no idea what's actually interesting about them## Important Links- You can reach Kathy Wang at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathytwang/- Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space- Checkout Press Club at https://pressclub.app/- Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev## Chapters0:00 - Introduction0:39 - The Press Club pitch: top-tier press with zero journalist connections1:29 - Quitting her job a week after one conference talk3:25 - Six months of daily content before she had an idea4:30 - The hackathon that became Press Club (and a co-founder) in a day6:23 - Does posting every day burn out your audience?7:00 - Top-of-funnel vs bottom-of-funnel content, done with intent11:41 - The build-in-public lesson most founders get backwards15:32 - Building in public vs performing for the algorithm19:50 - Events as Press Club's primary customer-acquisition channel23:19 - Inside the cold-outreach engine: finding the right 200 journalists26:26 - Why AI-written pitches beat hand-edited ones, and the 10% response rate29:09 - A six-day pitch-to-published Axios campaign30:38 - The three criteria that make a founder newsworthy31:14 - When press changes the trajectory of a deal33:36 - Credibility vs customer acquisition: tier-one vs niche outlets35:52 - Manufacturing a newsworthy moment as a pre-seed founder37:38 - The belief about building in public she flipped38:42 - Her secret to never running out of content ideas41:18 - The one thing to do after this episode43:51 - Running a 30-day LinkedIn challenge across the team45:52 - Where to find Kathy

    #68 How to Land Press With Zero Journalist Connections | Startup PR | Kathy Wang

  7. Aug 5

    #67 You Won't Notice You've Become the Boss You Hate | Leadership Under Pressure | Sabina Nawaz

    Guest Introduction I'm joined by Sabina Nawaz, CEO Coach, Keynote speaker, Author, Board member at Nawaz Consulting LLC. She spent fourteen years at Microsoft running executive development for over 11,000 managers before becoming an executive coach to CEOs and leaders across the globe. Episode Summary Her book argues it's not power that corrupts leaders, it's pressure. This episode shows how the exact strengths that built your company can quietly turn you into the manager your team fears, and how to catch it before it costs you your best people. Key Points - 🔥 Why the strengths that got you funded are exactly what makes you a bad manager - 💡 The real reason "how'd I do?" is the worst question a founder can ask - 🎯 Why over 95% of "teams" aren't actually teams at all - 🚀 The two-word response that instantly kills defensiveness when receiving feedback - 🧭 The four "sole provider" traps quietly burning out high performers - 🪞 Her own worst moment as a boss, and what it revealed about power - ⏸️ Why "Blank Space" (doing absolutely nothing) might be the highest-leverage move a leader can make Important Links - You can reach Sabina Nawaz at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabinanawaz - Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space - Checkout Nawaz Consulting LLC at https://sabinanawaz.com - Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev ## Chapters 0:00 - Introduction 0:35 - Why getting promoted is more dangerous than a bad hire 2:07 - From Microsoft software teams to coaching 11,000 managers 4:25 - Blank space: building a habit of doing nothing 7:44 - The hardest 30 seconds of the day: breaking the phone-check habit 9:57 - The strengths that get you promoted and the ones that get you fired 10:53 - It's not power that corrupts, it's pressure 12:52 - How founders can actually get honest feedback 15:45 - The two words that stop you sounding defensive 16:48 - Why 95% of "teams" aren't really teams 20:22 - The two questions that build real trust on a team 21:40 - Why founders should be the third person to speak 23:50 - If you say you're self-aware, you're not 25:15 - When pressure makes you a better leader 26:24 - The sole provider trap: four ways high performers burn out 29:28 - The delegation dial, not a switch 32:04 - Doing nothing as the highest-leverage move for a startup 34:08 - Replace "yeah, but" with "yes, and" 35:33 - The single pattern that predicts whether a leader wrecks their team 37:37 - Her own "boss from hell" moment with a colleague named Zach 40:19 - Where to find Sabina and her book

    #67 You Won't Notice You've Become the Boss You Hate | Leadership Under Pressure | Sabina Nawaz

  8. Jul 9

    #66 Quiet Quitting Is a Design Outcome, Not an Attitude Problem | Work Design | Justin Robbins

    I'm joined by Justin Robbins — he spent years studying why the best employees go silent, and his answer is that it's never a people problem. It's always a design problem. He's the founder of Metric Sherpa and author of More Than a Motto. ## Episode Summary Most leaders believe quiet quitting is a people problem — a failure of attitude, motivation, or grit. Justin Robbins argues it's a design outcome: a predictable result of organizations that promise one thing and practice another. His research surfaced six specific design habits — the RHYTHM framework — that separate organizations where work energizes people from ones that quietly destroy them. When the system consistently undermines the people who care most, disengagement isn't rebellion — it's rational. ## Key Points - 🔥 The people most likely to quiet quit are your highest performers — the ones who care most carry the system longest, and break first - 💡 Values docs don't fail because leaders are hypocrites — clarity degrades with every new hire, and nobody ever built a system to stop it - 🎯 86% of companies think their customers trust them. 44% of customers agree. Justin calls this a collective hallucination — and traces it to internal dysfunction, not bad PR - 🚀 Hustle culture becomes a burnout factory the moment you've never clarified where you're going — ambiguity without destination is the actual killer - 🎭 Most culture problems are org design problems — we solve them with therapy, surveys, and Chief People Officers, which guarantees they get worse ## Important Links - You can reach Justin Robbins at https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmrobbins/ - Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space - Checkout Metric Sherpa at https://morethanamotto.com - Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev ## Chapters 0:00 - Introduction 1:12 - Why the most passionate employees quiet quit first 3:25 - Promise vs. practice: the root cause of disconnection 4:38 - The real cost of a values doc nobody lives by 8:19 - How to embed values without sounding like a broken record 11:18 - Benchmarking culture vs. building something ownable 14:08 - The 6 RHYTHM habits: from clarity to repeat 17:13 - Startups and ambiguity: burnout factory or design choice? 20:05 - From contact center researcher to Metric Sherpa founder 23:40 - The Pizza Party Problem and 4 questions every employee asks 28:36 - Recognition done right: connect to values, not heroics 34:51 - The 86/44 trust gap: why leaders hallucinate customer loyalty 38:17 - How to actually measure whether customers trust you 43:54 - AI and work design: the transformation leaders aren't ready for 46:56 - Org design problems dressed up as feelings problems 51:16 - What broken organizations reveal in the first 20 minutes 53:54 - When is an organization truly unfixable? 56:32 - Early warning signs you need cultural intervention now 58:44 - Hustle culture: when does it flip from asset to liability? 1:02:02 - Why subcultures emerge when hustle culture gets baked in 1:04:18 - Where to find the book and who should read it

    #66 Quiet Quitting Is a Design Outcome, Not an Attitude Problem | Work Design | Justin Robbins
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About

Venturing with Vishesh is a weekly founder interview podcast hosted by Vishesh Duggar (5× founder, ex-CTO at Vamstar). Each week Vishesh talks to SaaS founders, AI builders, and venture capitalists from the US, Europe and India — unpacking what almost broke their companies and how they turned it around. Real fundraising stories, GTM playbooks, product-market fit lessons, and the unglamorous side of building a startup. Guests backed by Y Combinator, Benchmark, a16z, and Sequoia. New episodes every week.

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