SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

Anand Daniel

Accel launched SeedToScale in August 2020 to remove information asymmetry in the startup ecosystem and make a founder's path to success as frictionless as possible. We aim to achieve this by providing the best source of knowledge and actionable insights for company building. In the three years since, we have created over 300 knowledge pieces covering all stages of building a company. We collaborated with 80+ industry experts, successful founders, and mentors to create thematic series, reports, blogs, guest articles, podcasts, and other forms of content. Overall, we have reached 500K knowledge seekers.

  1. APR 15

    Microsoft on AI Startups: Why Speed, Taste, and Trust Will Define Winners | Decoding AI

    We’re in the early innings of AI, and the playbook for building companies is already changing. In this episode of SeedToScale, Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel, sits down with Jason Graefe, CVP of Microsoft’s AI Partner Catalyst Team, to unpack what’s actually changing in the AI era. From building products to winning enterprise customers, the playbook is being rewritten in real time. Jason brings a unique vantage point, working closely with some of the fastest-scaling AI companies globally, while also operating inside Microsoft at the forefront of AI transformation. The insights are practical, grounded, and directly relevant to founders building today. Here’s what we explore in this episode: • Why we’re still in the “early innings” of AI, and what that means for founders • The shift from horizontal AI tools to durable, workflow-driven products • Why the first enterprise sale is always a trust sale • How design partners can accelerate product-market fit • Speed as a moat: why faster iteration is defining winners • The role of “taste” in building products users actually stick with • Why go-to-market needs to be built from day one, not as an afterthought • The “golden age of margin”: reducing costs while creating entirely new products • India’s structural advantage in building and scaling AI startups If you’re a founder, builder, or operator trying to understand how to win in the AI cycle, this conversation is a clear, grounded playbook. Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 0:58 - India’s startup energy and why this market stands out 2:07 - What’s changed since pre-COVID 3:18 - Global AI ecosystems and where India fits 4:42 - The rise of second-generation founders in India 6:05 - Why startups are scaling faster than ever 7:26 - From Flipkart to AI-native companies: the infra shift 9:12 - Is the AI market already crowded? 10:36 - Why we’re still in the early innings of AI 11:48 - AI in traditional industries: where we actually are 12:31 - The “golden age of margin” explained 13:52 - Startups hitting profitability faster with AI 15:04 - Moving atoms vs moving bits: what AI can’t disrupt easily 17:18 - Where the real opportunities still exist 18:42 - Horizontal vs vertical AI: speed vs durability 20:11 - Building AI products that adapt to enterprises 22:07 - Why personalization creates sticky products 23:34 - Software that feels like it’s built for you 25:02 - Enterprise AI adoption: two buyer behaviors 26:41 - Why the first sale is always a trust sale 28:06 - How to win your first design partners 29:52 - Enterprises are more open than ever to co-building 31:08 - Surviving rapid LLM evolution 32:14 - Taste: the ultimate differentiator in AI products 33:27 - Real-time feedback loops → faster product iteration 34:52 - Speed as the new moat 36:09 - Domain experts vs first-principles builders 37:42 - First-mover advantage in AI 39:03 - How product + GTM cycles are compressing 40:18 - Why GTM must be built from day one 42:06 - Experimentation in go-to-market 43:38 - India as a proving ground for global products 45:11 - Why early customers matter more than big logos 47:02 - Product-led vs forward-deployed models 48:36 - Selling outcomes, not software 50:07 - India’s structural advantage in AI talent 51:19 - The culture of learning driving adoption 52:27 - Outro Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn: / seedtoscale Follow Shekhar Kirani on LinkedIn: / kirani Follow Jason Graefe on LinkedIn: / jason-graefe #SeedToScale #Microsoft #Accel #AI #AIFounders #Startups #ArtificialIntelligence #Product #GoToMarket #IndiaTech #AIStartups

    55 min

  2. FEB 24

    Inside Ixigo’s Series B Deck: The Making of a Listed Company | PitchCraft Season 2

    In this episode of PitchCraft, Ixigo MD and Group CEO Aloke Bajpai joins early investor Shailesh Lakhani to revisit the company’s 2016 Series B deck, a moment that captured Ixigo at an inflection point in India’s evolving travel market. The conversation traces how Ixigo moved beyond being a travel meta-search engine by focusing relentlessly on solving customer pain points across flights, trains, and buses, while betting early on mobile growth and product-led innovation. Shailesh reflects on what built conviction after years of tracking the founders: disciplined execution, resilience through multiple crises, and the willingness to pivot from aggregation to owning transactions when customer experience demanded it. They unpack the strategic shifts, and long-term decisions that shaped Ixigo’s journey from startup to publicly listed travel technology leader.

    47 min

  3. FEB 10

    Lessons for founders from an early backer of Figma, CRED, Curefit, Airtable, and Postman | SeedToScale Specials

    Founders today are building in an environment shaped by constant technological shifts and evolving team dynamics. In this episode, Gokul Rajaram, Partner at Marathon Management Partners and early backer of companies like CRED, Figma, Curefit, and Postman, shares how he thinks about building startups that endure. Drawing on his experience as a product leader, investor, and board member, Gokul reflects on the patterns he’s seen across hundreds of companies. The conversation explores how founders navigate inflection points, scale teams responsibly, make irreversible decisions, and earn trust over time—with customers, teams, and investors. Gokul also speaks candidly about what tends to break early companies, and what quietly compounds when founders get the fundamentals right.

    50 min

  4. FEB 2

    How investors evaluate startups: Insights from India's leading VCs | SeedToScale Specials

    Behind every funding decision lies hours of evaluation founders never get to witness. This episode of SeedToScale offers a rare backstage pass into the room where ideas are dissected, and where a simple yes or no is anything but simple. Seasoned investors, Mukul Arora, Co-Managing Partner at Elevation Capital, and Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV, sit for a discussion with Anand Daniel, Partner, Accel, to unpack what really happens, from the first cold email to the final investment committe vote. The conversation goes beyond the cliches and gets brutally honest about how thousands of startups get filtered.

    1h 12m

  5. JAN 29

    A Founder’s Guide to the Ultimate Pitch Memo ft. Accel’s Pratik Agarwal | PitchCraft Season 2

    “Founders need to stop assuming VCs are Excel junkies.” In this episode of PitchCraft, Pratik Agarwal, Partner at Accel, breaks down how investors really evaluate startups today. We’re no longer in a copy-paste playbook era. Founders are building unfamiliar ideas across AI, consumer, SaaS, fintech, and deep tech and investors are comparing radically different businesses side by side. In that world, numbers alone don’t create conviction. Pratik introduces the CORE framework, a universal pitch memo designed to help founders communicate what truly matters: • Change: What has shifted in the world that makes this idea inevitable now • Opportunity: Why this is a real, urgent problem with undeniable pull • Resilience: How the business can compound, defend itself, and become a default • Edge: The founder’s unique perspective and right to win In this episode. Pratik walks through how this framework is already being used, and why it works across geographies, stages, and sectors. If you’re a founder raising capital, refining your pitch deck, or struggling to get investors to really get your idea, this episode is your playbook.

    37 min
  6. How August Is Building the 'World’s Largest Consumer Health AI' | Decoding AI Episode 12

    JAN 23

    How August Is Building the 'World’s Largest Consumer Health AI' | Decoding AI Episode 12

    Doctor visits are short. Health journeys are long. In this episode, Anuruddh Mishra, Founder & CEO of August AI, talks about building an AI-led health companion designed to support patients beyond brief clinical interactions. He shares how August is built to retain personal health context over time, stay available when questions come up, and help people make sense of scattered medical information across their journey. Watch the full episode for the complete conversation. Chapters: 0:09 - Intro 0:33 - What is an AI health companion 3:06 - As an engineer, why did you choose to get into this field related to health? 8:04 - Did you worry about ChatGPT being a competition? 10:15 - How do you look at benchmarks? 14:31 - How is it performing versus human doctors? 15:40 - Why are you a horizontal health AI platform? 17:53 - Where does August AI stand in terms of memory? 21:37 - Is August’s memory different from general purpose memory? 21:53 - Are there any general purpose memory tools or do you have to build everything in-house? 23:00 - How much did you spend on marketing? 24:15 - What did you do in the early days to get this magical market pull? 27:30 - How did you go about fundraising & was it challenging? 33:30 - Aren’t you worried about Google & ChatGPT coming at August with full force once they take notice? 36:00 - Can you help us walk through your version of the world filled with an abundance of clinical knowledge? 38:54 - How do you ensure that AI never crosses regulatory guardrails? 42:36 - In 10 years what will be inevitable with AI in healthcare? 44:36 - Outro Follow Anuruddh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuruddhmishra/?originalSubdomain=in Follow Anagh Prasad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaghprasad/?originalSubdomain=in Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale/ #DecodingAI #SeedToScale #Accel #Healthcare #Tech #Medical #Startup #Funding #Digital

    45 min

  7. 11/11/2025

    Haber: Building Smarter, More Efficient Factories with AI-Driven Automation | Decoding Manufacturing

    Everyone’s talking about generative AI. Few talk about industrial AI: where the data meets the factory floor. In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Vipin Raghavan, Co-founder & CEO, Haber, explains how Haber is using AI to close the loop between lab and line, turning process data into real-time chemistry control and measurable profit impact. From automating dosing systems to building trust through prediction accuracy, Vipin breaks down what it takes to bring AI into legacy plants, why Haber prices by production output instead of licenses, and how vertical depth and reliability built a zero-churn business. He also talks about India’s manufacturing readiness, cultural differences in adoption, and what the road to autonomous factories really looks like. Chapters 00:00 – Intro: AI that augments, not replaces operators 02:57 – The three universal manufacturing challenges 07:25 – Why now: Connected factories and cheaper edge compute 09:59 – Trust before autonomy: Building accuracy first 13:52 – The pacemaker product and Haber’s zero churn 17:37 – Pricing by the tonne, not by the seat 21:46 – India vs West: Cultural adoption of industrial AI 24:36 – Building T-shaped talent 27:33 – The long road to near-autonomous factories Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more insights: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale Follow Vipin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vipin-raghavan-6142986/?originalSubdomain=in #AI #Manufacturing #Automation #Innovation #Technology #Sustainability #Industry #Data #DecodingManufacturing

    31 min

  8. 11/08/2025

    Mastering Data: How Turing Is Powering the Next Leap in Artificial Superintelligence | Decoding AI Episode 11

    Everyone’s talking about AI models. Few talk about the data that moves them forward. In this episode of Decoding AI, Jonathan Siddharth, Founder & CEO, Turing, explains how Turing evolved from a global developer platform into a research accelerator, fueling the world’s top labs and enterprises with bespoke, interdisciplinary training data. From RL gyms to post-training pipelines, Turing is engineering the human-in-the-loop systems that are quietly pushing us toward ASI. Chapters 00:00 – Intro: The Future of Intelligence 01:11 – From Stanford to Rover: Jonathan’s Founder Journey 07:05 – The Idea Behind Turing 09:28 – Why Post-Training Is the Real Edge in AI 12:49 – How the World’s Smartest Humans Move Models Forward 19:10 – Inside Alan: Turing’s Data Engine & Talent Network 21:17 – How Enterprises Build Their AI Advantage 25:28 – The 100× Productivity Shift Ahead 29:59 – Closing Thoughts: The Future of Work & Intelligence Follow Anand Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananddaniel/ Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonsid/ Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more updates: linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale #startup #ai #artificialintelligence #turing #data #ASI #artificialsuperintelligence #intelligence #aimodels

    35 min
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About

Accel launched SeedToScale in August 2020 to remove information asymmetry in the startup ecosystem and make a founder's path to success as frictionless as possible. We aim to achieve this by providing the best source of knowledge and actionable insights for company building. In the three years since, we have created over 300 knowledge pieces covering all stages of building a company. We collaborated with 80+ industry experts, successful founders, and mentors to create thematic series, reports, blogs, guest articles, podcasts, and other forms of content. Overall, we have reached 500K knowledge seekers.

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