Tanay Pratap

Building a startup is not for the faint-hearted. At first, there will be zero paying users and a buggy product. Your family might doubt your choices, and money will run out faster than you think. There will be days when the urge to return to a steady job feels overwhelming. But startup founders are a different breed—they persist when others would quit. Startup founders always embrace the uncertainty of the journey. They consider each setback an opportunity to grow, to refine the business, and to come back stronger. They turn adversity into fuel and keep trying until they succeed. Video Credit: Dagobert Renouf ~~~~~ ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost it so your network can learn from it, too. And follow me, Fazlur Shah, for more content like this. #startups #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #investing

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Yesterday I got asked the most popular question: What’s the fastest way to grow a SaaS startup? Answer, just 3 simple things. 1. Raise millions dollar Before writing a single line of code. 2. Hire a 20-member team Before getting your first customer. 3. Spend on billboards and fancy branding Before revenue. And congraculations, Your startup is selected for “How to go bankrupt faster then expected." With, 1. $00000 in depth 2. 25 employees salary to pay. 3. Great branding which noone like. Just kidding, 😂 Here’s my real answer Building a SaaS startup isn’t about shortcuts. It’s not about speed. And it’s definitely not about the destination. But it’s a journey Between the founder and the market. Which begins with identifying the problem. And ends with delivering the right solution. And everything in between? It’s just market testing the founder - For his vision. - For his purpose. - For his patience to build. So, SaaS founders remember. Don't look forward to destination, Before you have start enjoying The Journey of to be. (Other wise, you will be soon get, welcome to bankruptcy club of SaaS)... 😂 P.S. Would you like to get membership in Bankruptcy club ! If so, comment down to get added.... 😂

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A startups journey is defined in these 3 stages: A. 0 to 1 B. 1 to 10 C. 10 to forever. But for the team, the journey is between those stages, not in those stages. When you reach at 1, you have to move from A to B. Moving A to B requires changing gears. It is very very difficult. Lot of failures happen during the gear change. You commit to a higher fuel consumption without immediately seeing any change in revenue. You lose a lot of your team members. You are required to unlearn-relearn a lot of things. But for the outside world you are still at 1. It's even worse when you realise that there is no clear demarcation for when you have arrived at 1. There are just symptoms. The regular growth levers stop working. Fuel efficiency goes down, there is a invisible resistance from all direction. But for the outside world you are still at 1. What helps in this situation? A set of believers, in the team and outside. Be very transparent with them. Albeit small, this set of believers is earned while you are happily running in those stages. When you may not need them at all.

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Managing a bigger team without micromanaging is harder than most founders admit. At Altrd, we ran daily stand-ups through a Google Chat group. Mornings were for “here’s what I plan to do.” Evenings were for “here’s what I did.” It worked beautifully, until the team grew. Then it turned noisy, messy, and impossible to track. I couldn’t read every message. I couldn’t chase every update. And honestly, I shouldn’t have to. So we built our own AI Product which was a dashboard connected directly to Google Chat. It gave us three simple lenses: Overview: Company health at a glance that included active projects, on-hold work, completed tasks, leave schedules. People: A snapshot per person -workload, active tasks, alerts when someone’s stuck too long. Projects: Timelines showing who’s doing what, how long it takes, and where profitability stands. This single tool gave us what endless check-ins couldn’t: visibility without micromanagement. Autonomy for the team. Confidence for me as a founder. If you’ve faced the same challenge, how did you solve it? And if you’re curious, I’d be happy to share what we built.

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founders, if every pitch you don’t convert spirals you down - this is for you. when we started thinkly labs, every call that didn’t close would throw us off completely. we would not only obsess over the entire call but also sometimes cut our ask by 40% just to get a yes. because in our heads, a lost deal meant not hitting our target. but here’s what we learned the hard way: we had to improve the top of our funnel. when you don’t have enough at the top of the funnel, every lead feels precious. every call feels like the only shot, making us sell from desperation instead of confidence. once we fixed that, the pressure disappeared and lead to a couple of things: 1. we repeated our pitch so many times, it became better iteratively 2. with the pressure off, we could pitch with confidence and we were closing more clients. so if you’re obsessing over your pitch right now, stop focus on top of your funnel. ps. ps. if you want to book demos through your content, reach out to us.

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You can live without growth. You can’t live without cash. That’s what two years of running a bootstrapped consumer startup has taught me. No safety net. No VC runway. Just cash-in, cash-out and the thin line in between. Here are three hard-earned lessons about cash that every bootstrapped founder feels in their gut but only few talk about honestly: 1. Cash-Flow Discipline is Non-Negotiable. In the first year, our decisions had one filter: “Will we survive this month?” I didn’t pay myself for more than 18 months. We staggered vendor payments. We held off hiring even when it hurt. And yes we let go of good people we simply couldn’t afford. It’s not heartless. It’s survival. Founders love to talk about product, vision, and culture. But in bootstrapping, your real superpower is being a ruthless cash-flow manager. 2. The Founder’s Salary is a Mental Trap. You can pay yourself. But should you? Every few weeks, I’d revisit the same question: Should I take a salary this month or extend our runway further? And it’s not just about numbers. If you’re constantly anxious about rent, EMIs, or parents needing money, you’re a liability to your own business. Eventually, I learned this: Pay yourself just enough to stay sane. Because a burnt-out founder can’t build anything, no matter how cash-efficient the company is. 3. Sometimes, You Must Kill the Long Game. We once had a team working on a product that could’ve paid off in a few years. We shut it down. Not because it was bad but because it wasn’t going to help us survive this quarter. When you’re bootstrapped, you’re forced to prioritise short-term revenue over long-term bets. It’s brutal. You feel like you’re sabotaging future growth. But guess what? There’s no long-term if you don’t survive the short-term. Bootstrapping doesn’t just teach you cash management. It rewires your brain to see every rupee as a strategic decision. You stop chasing vanity growth. You stop lying to yourself. The only guiding principle is this: you must survive today.

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As a founder, you get used to living in extremes. One morning you feel unstoppable - the product demo clicked, a customer said “this is a game-changer.” By evening, you’re struck with fixing some issues wondering if you’ve been delusional all along. The swing can be brutal. But here’s the insight: stability doesn’t come from the business, it comes from you. Learning to be calm when things are on fire and grounded when things are soaring - is the real superpower. Because the company will always ride waves. Your job is to be the one who doesn’t drown in them. #founder #startups #entrepreneurship #work #founderlife

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