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Interviews with world-class startup founders about their unique paths to uncover tactical insights they've learned about how to fundraise, grow, validate, hire, scale, and lead teams while building your startup.
Get full access to detailed takeaways on each episode, additional case studies, and more at join.foundingjourney.com
I'm actually going for a $1,000,000,000,000 company.
Michael Houck:That's Poojan Bhanagar. He dropped out of Stanford, Harvard and MIT to build startups.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Even before joining Harvard, I'm talking about dropping out of Harvard.
Michael Houck:He told me how he doubled his startups valuation to $75,000,000 just 3 months after the last round. And why he personally walked away from half
Pujun Bhatnagar:a
Michael Houck:$1,000,000. And why he's focused on solving problems in unsexy industries. This is Poojan Bhatnagar's founding journey.
Michael Houck:Alright, Poojan. Welcome to the podcast, man. Thanks for coming on. Good to
Pujun Bhatnagar:see you. Of course. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you for taking out the time.
Michael Houck:Yeah. Of course. No. So we've known each other for a while, and you told me right before we hopped on here that while we were talking, kind of doing our little intro before we start recording, 8 more people have paid and signed up for the product. So tell me, what are you building?
Michael Houck:Why is it growing so fast? Give me the backstory.
Pujun Bhatnagar:So our company specializes in putting sales tax on autopilot for ecommerce brands, b to c SaaS software, and b to b SaaS software. The idea of sales tax automation is not something that we invented. This has existed since 19 seventies, if not earlier. We did not invent the idea of sales tax in general, has existed since the time beginning. But what we did was made a very unsexy, complicated, nonrevenue generating problem into being like, with 7 clicks or 3 minutes, we will automate your sales tax compliance.
Pujun Bhatnagar:What that means is as a business owner, you focus on your revenue, and all the back office sales tax compliance that is due every month, people often think that sales tax is due every year. What is due every month? We do that all for you. And so as we were, like, jumping on this call together, I was looking at the statistics. And while we were on the call, 8 people have, like, gone ahead, created a Kintsugi account, and put their credit card down for that same exact reason.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And the reason why it's working so well, dare I say, is the fact that we do not want to have demos. We do not want to have long sales cycles. We do not want to sell a vision and then have people jump into the product through onboarding. What we wanna do is make it that simple. Hey.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Go create an account, connect your data, and in 3 minutes, put down your credit card. And then if you wanna chat with us, by all means.
Michael Houck:So, obviously, you guys are AI powered software. A lot of people are tackling AI right now, past few years. You guys went after this incredibly sort of old standardized boring industry, I I I would say. And yet you find this giant opportunity where you you're unlocking exponential growth. Why not go after something I mean, obviously, the results speak for themselves, but initially, why didn't you go after something that might be a little sexier?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think unsexy problems make the most amount of money. And if I wanna work on sexy things, I would have stayed in my PhD program at Stanford. I do not wanna do research. When when there's a gold rush, and there's a gold rush happening in ecommerce, and there's a gold rush happening in software. And I believe in empowering businesses to sell globally.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And the biggest headache that businesses get when they're selling globally is compliance. Right? It's not ads. It's not how do I find the users. It's not like how do I check out?
Pujun Bhatnagar:It's actually like this one thing where I have done all the heavy lifting and people are willing to pay me and I collect payments, and then the government comes and says, hey. We owe you you owe us a piece of the pie. And it's it's such a feeling. You're like, but why is the invoicing software not automating this? Like, let me just do what I wanna do.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Right?
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Michael Houck:What would you say to another founder who's thinking about building an AI? Maybe they're in the idea maze right now, and they're trying to find these problem spaces that maybe are less obvious, but very, very painful. What is what should founders look for for a good problem to solve with AI?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think AI is like a forest fire. It is like a fire which has probably burned out a lot of, like, existing companies that are not AI native or AI powered. What a founder should always look for is essentially a key unlock about a problem being so unsexy and so irritating and so just, like, I do not wanna deal with it. I don't wanna think about it. I wanna pay somebody, some amount of money and have it go away.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Because AI is like mathematics of 21st century. It's like what computers did in the 19 sixties. Right? We can automate things that we used to use people before. And we can you can apply this, like, amazing, like, tuned models to essentially, like, do whatever that you desire.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But still, the main hurdle remains is, how do you apply the skill set in your in your toolbox? And you asked a question about how should founders go about finding these. I would say, talk to fellow founders. Like, I need to give you credit. I think the opportunity that you created for us at HackHouse allowed us to be submerged by these amazing group of people.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And everyone was like, hey. And this is how we are gonna monetize, or this is how we are gonna make money, or this is how we are gonna win this market. But the meta point that hit my brain going through that, like, intense exercises, everyone is talking about making money, making something profitable, making something sustainable. How can we help these companies focus on that increase in revenue? So what are the the deterrents that basically force people to take the eye off the ball?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And then I basically looked at, like, okay. What is the least sexy area where no automation is happening and people are pretending to be software companies when they're, like, agencies in disguise? And I was, like, let's attack that.
Michael Houck:For anybody listening who doesn't know, HackHouse was a version of my old company, we called LaunchHouse. HackHouse was specifically for technical folks who wanted to come live together for a month, build a new startup, and then take it through a hackathon at the end. And, Pujan, you, one of our early members, and you did the hackathon, you built something amazing, and myself and our other judges, we put you in 4th place. You didn't even make the podium, man, but then you go on and sell the company later.
Pujun Bhatnagar:It's all good. It's all good. I think that's the thing. Right? Like, I think founders need to be able to put themselves out there, put a prototype, get punched on a daily basis, and dust their self dust themselves off, and be like, there's another angle to this, and there's another angle to this.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think people look at my resume, and they're like, oh, this this guy must be a genius. He went to these, like, prestigious a list schools, the Georgia Tech, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, all of these things. But really what it boils down to is, are you ready to do what it takes to get the job done or not? Because no degree proves that. What proves it is till what level will you go?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Mhmm. And how pig headed you are? Like, people call it tenacity. People call it unwavering determination, but I think my brain just works on AM frequency when everyone's every other person's brain works on an FM frequency.
Michael Houck:What do you mean by that? That's interesting.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think this is a contradiction of life that I have I feel and I continue to feel, especially in my early twenties and, as I'm going into my mid thirties. When I was at these, like, colleges and whatnot, I felt that I had a lot to give. I'm a usually ambitious person, and I felt like there's all this life and energy in me that I I wanna put to use. But at the same time, I just felt frustrated with myself that, like, what am I doing with my life? Like, I went to all of these schools.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I had just graduated with my master's degree from Stanford. I was working at Facebook, and I was a senior machine learning engineer. Like, life was great. My total comp was over half a $1,000,000 and whatnot. But I was like, why am I not shooting for the fences?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And so you realize that, like, you have this tremendous opportunity, and so you feel like, oh, you're sitting on a pot of gold, and then you're feeling frustrated that you're not able to use that. And you're like, constant in the state of like, I can describe that as only irritation.
Michael Houck:You know? It's the curse of being ambitious.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I guess. And and I I I would I would talk about this, like, with my fellow friends and, like, colleagues, and people would be like, but you'll but we have x y z things in life, other things that, like, they care about and which is why they're doing what they're doing. And I respect that a lot. But for me, the other things were not that important in terms of, like I was like, I will figure it out. But what I will what I'm not willing to compromise on is to have regrets in terms of, like, I turn around, and I'm 40, 50, 60 years old, and I never shot for the fences.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I think that is where I do not understand other people, and perhaps other people do not understand me is because I think for me, things make sense in terms of, like, of course, we should take this risk. Of course, we should move at the speed of light. Of course, we should launch and launch and launch and launch and launch. And other people are like, no. But, like, let's do one more thing before putting ourselves out there.
Michael Houck:What what do you think the end state of that is? Right? Like, let's say, you know, you guys keep growing at the rate you're growing, the exponential curve hits, becomes a $1,000,000,000 company, $10,000,000,000 company. What happens to your ambition and vision at that point?
Pujun Bhatnagar:First off, I'm I'm I'm actually going for a $1,000,000,000 company. Like, I I just wanna be honest. I joke about this with my founders and with my team. I already have a b in front of my name. I'm looking for that t now.
Pujun Bhatnagar:The thing that I would tell you is, like, I think one of the unique aspects of leadership, and I I have somehow found myself in this position of being a co founder and CEO of a amazing company is the journey never ends. The scope of the problem changes, but problems never end. I think, dare I say, we have all, all of us have worked in situations where we felt like we were not able to be our full selves and give it our all in a situation. And what I wanna do is is create a company and a culture of high performers no matter where the person comes from, where they are living, what the color of their skin is, whatever their sexual orientation is, whatever it is, where they can do their best work, and there's no limit to the opportunities that they can afford. And compliance is something where, like, I'll share some statistics with you.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Even if we capture 2% of the US market, we'd be doing $2,000,000,000 in revenue. There are 195 other countries in the world. And on top of it, by creating this amazing legacy, you can help people. Like, I'm an immigrant, and perhaps I can pass the torch of supporting a family, donating money, and creating a culture because of starting kintsugi and saying somebody else gets that opportunity because somebody took a chance on me when I came to the US. Do you know the concept of Kintsugi or, like, what the word means?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Please tell us. It's it comes from a Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery and joining it with gold. There's some semblance of it as sales tax is broken, data lives in silos, and so you need to have 3 60 view of revenue, and a 3 60 view of HR in order to do sales tax correctly. And so we are building all these APIs that can plug in with Stripes, Chargebee, QuickBooks, Shopify, and get all of that information in one place and do everything from for you without any human being in the loop. But the meta meaning of the word is, I think as we turn adults and as he goes through life, life breaks us down.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Happens. Growth is not linear. No matter how much we may show otherwise on our LinkedIn, it's not linear. There are always curve balls and we feel broken in our own life.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I'm sure both you and I can relate to this. And then it's up to us to bring our broken pieces together and somehow join them and say that we are more valuable than what we were, given the experience we had. So it's an homage to to all my employees saying like, hey, we are imperfect, but us working together are creating something that's more valuable than the sum of the parts.
Michael Houck:It's not just about the problem they're coming in to solve. It's about the way of working, how the company is run.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And also, like, it's about, like, the pottery becomes more and more intricate when we transform and become better and better. Like, I I'll give you an example. Other companies in this space take 3 to 4 years to expand into another country. We have built an engine because we moved so quickly that we were able to expand into Canada for Canadian VAT, compliance in less than 20 days. And now we are expanding into Europe, and people are like and VCs are like, hey.
Pujun Bhatnagar:How are you doing this? But it's like, I do not understand why other people are not doing it using AI, but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna do it.
Michael Houck:Yeah. You mentioned with no human in the loop. You said that a minute or 2 ago, and and you sort of reiterated it there a little bit.
Pujun Bhatnagar:That's really
Michael Houck:interesting to me because the trend right now, at least the trend that people talk about on on x or on LinkedIn is, you know, service as a software instead of software as a service where you're basically building a tech powered, AI powered agency, and, you know, you're going at the problem that from that direction. You seem like you're taking the other path. You're like, cut out the agency entirely. Let's just build the software.
Pujun Bhatnagar:That's a very conscious choice. I think 85% of what we spend on a overall company basis is spent on engineering. And that comes from a big belief that things that were not possible to automate 5 years ago are possible today. I think everyone likes to use the AI verbiage, and I'm no stranger to that because even when I, like, started my PhD at Stanford, as a CS student, a lot of people were like, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:But you look under the hood and you have some sort of a human labor doing things. But for us, it's like, yes, we are gonna spend more on engineering, but that is the right thing to do. I think we are not trying to replace human beings, but we are asking them to do more creative things by automating the more mundane tasks. So Google was not the right thing to do. That that other competitors and other incubate, incubents were not using, and they used it in their own unique flavor.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I'll give you an example. Because of our PLG led motion, we actually see a lot more data, exponentially more data, than any other company in the space. Because people just go in, they connect their data. And then we are able to leverage AI to basically say, hey, What is happening here? How are other companies in the sales tax domain handling these transactions versus what are we doing differently?
Pujun Bhatnagar:But we have this flywheel effect going on where we can learn faster than anyone else. And then you apply this with, because I'm a nerd, you apply this with hardcore mathematics. You make this beautiful product saying, hey, I need to bring in a human in the loop, only 0.0001 percent times if my algorithm is not more than 99.999% sure. So instead of pinging a CPA maybe a 1000 times, you're pinging them once.
Michael Houck:How do you build that type of flywheel? How do you know that you can get to that 99.999% of not needing the human in the loop? What's the what's the secret there?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I mean, the secret is really understanding how to build ruling engines, how to build AI algorithms and LLM models that are focused on one vertical niche, in this case, sales tax. So we are not doing all different kinds of tax compliance. We are taking the rules and regulations that are that have to be published on city, county, and states websites, and how do we parse them properly. I think a lot of people, what they do is they are trying to build foundational models about each and everything, but what we have built is a vertical, like, ground up model that only talks about sales and use tax. So it is it is fundamentally different in that way and that so, like, the chat GPDs of the world, because they are training on all the larger dataset, they are really good at answering questions about everything.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Our model is crap about answering questions about anything other than sales tax, but it's really, really good at sales tax. And that comes from an understanding of, like, how do you use the data correctly? I think a lot of people who are coming into the AI space, they do, okay, I'll do a little bit of fine tuning, or I'll do a little bit of, like, you know, what like, I'll I'll do I'll tweak things a little bit. Maybe they'll do a, like, a RAG implementation. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:But nobody's thinking about how to build things fundamentally.
Michael Houck:It's interesting. I go back to after chat GPT first launched in December 2022, so 2 years ago now. The hot take of the time that everyone was talking about, oh, you know, OpenAI is gonna eat everything. Eventually, chatgpt will be able to do anything no other company will need to exist, basically. It was very hyperbolic.
Michael Houck:Where do you think, like, do you think that the future of these verticalized models, do you think they're that is a sustainable product, defensible product for the for the long run for you guys?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Definitely. I I I would highly, highly argue that I think there's a case of horizontal foundation models for the day to day stuff, and there's a case of verticalized models for things like Fintech and health care where you don't wanna get things wrong. And those are fundamentally two things that are built differently. Like, when we talk about chat GPT, we talk about hallucinations. We talk about making them stuff that may not be real.
Pujun Bhatnagar:There are mathematical ways of controlling for that, but we don't do that in chat GPT, not because the people who are training that are bad at their job. It's because of a choice that the AI researcher is making that, hey, in order to absorb this large corpus of text that may relate to multiple different domains and multiple different things and different types of talking points and whatnot, you need to provide some ambiguity for the algorithm to be able to generalize. But versus when you're going for something vertical, you're like, no. I want you to do the best job at this one goddamn thing.
Michael Houck:Are those choices that you guys made at the at the level of the infrastructure level, like in the actual foundation model level, or is it more so how you then prompt the model that you've created to handle certain use cases?
Pujun Bhatnagar:We have not done any prompt engineering, period. Everything, including the way our company's data syncs happen are built from the ground up to be able to collect, process, and just transform the data that we need. And and that ties into our PLG model of, like, we don't gatekeep people by saying, hey. Pay us $10,000, and we are gonna onboard you in the next 3 weeks. We say, go connect the data, and that gives us much more advantages in terms of, like, learning from our customers that other people don't have.
Pujun Bhatnagar:That is why I'm I I'm frankly, like, I wanna run at the speed of light because we have captured this lightning in a bottle, and that's what we are doing. And if anyone else can do this, like, I I encourage them to come. Let's compete. Let's see what they can do. And competition is always healthy.
Michael Houck:What are the trade offs that you needed to make as you've scaled so quickly? You know, I think you said you guys have gone from 3 people to 70 people in less than a year. What are the trade offs?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think the biggest trade offs is we oftentimes say no to customers than saying yes. And like, it doesn't feel right to like turn revenue away, but there's a reason why we are the highest ranked sales tax automation app on Shopify, period, in all of the Shopify ecosystem. It's because we know our advantages, and we know where we are lacking. I think a lot of other folks, they fall into this trap of, like, oh, what if we do this one off thing for this one off customer, and that will give us 500 k more in revenue, and it's a big deal? But that is not how software works.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think in order to achieve things well and to master things well, you you you need to have for every one thing that you're saying yes to, there there has to be 3 things that you're saying no to. And this is a concept that I learned from Zuck at, like, Facebook during my time there is, like, the concept of ruthless prioritization. Like, just really, like, what we are building and what we are not building.
Michael Houck:I think a lot of people talk about that ruthless prioritization, but not a lot of people turn away 500 k in revenue. That's a that's another level.
Pujun Bhatnagar:That's fair, but if you if you if you don't turn away 500 k in revenue, then, you don't get 8 paid customers when you're on a podcast.
Michael Houck:I agree. I agree. What I've heard from you so far is definitely, like, the founder mind sets. Very clear you've internalized that. You are great example of the founder mindset.
Michael Houck:But you came from academia, and then you worked in big tech kind of in in between. So I'm curious. Was this always your mindset, or did it change when you sort of jumped into the startup world?
Pujun Bhatnagar:So I think, like, academia, at least my experience with academia has been very different from other people. I was very lucky to have, my adviser, Percy Liang, guide me through things. And he is the embodiment of, like, what I say is perfection for me. And I I every mentor that I have in the world, I I I see them as something that they do really, really well. And so what he used to do really, really well is whatever he put his mind to, he would craft nothing but gold when it came to, like, really deeply understanding what's happening with an AI system, what's happening foundationally on a statistical level with an AI model, like, how are these things working?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And he worked a lot in semantic classification. And so, yeah, while there was this AI hype that everyone was writing papers about ImageNet, and CNNs were a big thing when I was in grad school. But for me, I think that clear goal of, like, no. We are not gonna take the easy wear out, and we are gonna build something that's reproducible. Like, really build that muscle.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And, like, I was fortunate enough that when I when I graduated and, decided to join one of the tech companies, I had offers from all the fans. And the reason I chose Facebook was, I think you say whatever you wanna say about Zuckerberg, but, like, that man knows how to ruthlessly prioritize. And that is something that I've deeply, deeply value. He may not remember ever talking to me, but I see him as a mentor because of the fact that he has done, what, 6 acquisitions? And 5 out of those 6 acquisitions have been multibillion dollars.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Investment in WhatsApp, investment in Oculus, investment in IG. Like, Facebook shares were tanking, and this this person just, like, ruthlessly prioritized, and it's it's trading now at, like, 535 or 560. Right? So it's it's it's and the training I got at Facebook was this piece. Like, my my intern manager when I was just an intern, Daisy Shea, she taught me that.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And then my engineering manager, Deepa Divakar, and then Shweta and such it. They really, really ingrained the fact that, like, if there are 6 things that you're doing that you think that you need to do, stack rank them and physically, like, have a notebook cross out the last four things as a mental commitment that you're not gonna do them. The maximum you're gonna do is 2, and you should be really happy if you get to the top one.
Michael Houck:Doing something like having your one big thing every day, just staying focused on that is, you know, more founders should be should be doing that.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Look. Rome was not built in a day. I I think people when I do these podcast, people people see of me as, like, a genius in in in, like, working and whatnot. But really, my my team is what makes Kintsugi Kintsugi. My other 2 cofounders, Jeff and Barkin Barkin being very heavily, like, detail oriented and having worked in m and a and, like, having worked with large datasets.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And Jeff is just the PLG god and god of building data systems. Like, he he was head of data platforms at Atlassian for 6 years, the company who coined the term PLG. Right? So I think while I am ambitious, I've the other thing that I am also reminded of is I always hire people who are smarter than me that keep me on my toes.
Michael Houck:You're the generalist. You're the glue. Obviously, you're, you know, very knowledgeable about your domain, but having these specialists who are world class at one specific thing, that's how you build bring together a team that you can always learn from. It can always push you to to go harder and go faster.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Exactly. I think and then and, really, I think, like, when we were choosing the founding team, I've I've lived with them individually for over months months. And, really, the thing that I selected for is can this person take a punch in the face? And instead of being salty and instead of if they were done wrong in life, are they still kind? And they learn from, hey.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Something up happened, or they think that they're gonna be miserable for the rest of their lives and basically be angry. By the experiences I've gotten through the colleges that I've gone to, I've worked with some of the brilliant minds who are absolute to work with. Right? Like, absolutely, like, genius people, but, like, it feels like sometimes you just wanna shake them. And it's like, I think really realizing splitting with yourself, realizing that, like, I'm not perfect and hiring people who make me make our team into a well rounded figure is something that I think props our support.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think people focus a lot on, like, what AI to use and whatnot, but I think as important as the fact of, like, hey. This person, you're probably gonna know them and their kids and probably their grandkids, and you're gonna be together. Like, it's it's more important than probably a marriage.
Michael Houck:What's the toughest thing that you've gone through with your cofounders where you've been able to pull together, solve the problem, and come out strong on the other side?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think it was a decision of, like, again, prioritization. When you're doing less than, like, when you're doing less than 100 k in revenue and somebody says, hey. I'll pay you half a $1,000,000. It's very tempting. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:It's realizing that let's take a step back and the best thing I can do as a CEO is to listen to every point of view and say, we are gonna say no to this because we are building towards this grand vision. And even though it would be great to collect this, like like, 50 k MRR check coming in every every month, there's a bigger fish to fry. I think that was 1. Number 2 is really, like, sitting down and talking about how our pricing is gonna be. I think a lot of people start charging companies when they're providing no value.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Like, a lot of our competition does that. Other people in Fintech do it. But for us, we were always about how do we first provide value then charge. So our billing system was implemented in a way that we do not charge companies a single dollar for onboarding or for even connecting their data. Once they have done their 1st registration and first filing with us, then and only then do we charge.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Right? And, like, somebody could cancel their account. Right? But I think it's how do you differentiate yourself? And then coming back, you know, it's it's easy to do prompt engineering and have your model scale to just let's say US sales tax.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But if I were to do that, I would not be heavily investing in r and d. And people are like, wow. You're spending a lot of money on this. You could spend that on marketing or sales or operations. But, again, it comes back to what are we building.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Be truthful to yourself because I think when you start a company, you're a nobody. Right? And you get a little bit of traction and you're you somewhat become somebody, and then people have opinions. Everyone is a goddamn expert. You you listen to everyone, but you take everything with a grain of salt.
Michael Houck:How do you have the conviction and then following that up with the discipline to know and stick to that global maximum versus getting pulled towards these local maximum that you uncover along the way?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think it's all about, like, surrounding myself with people who would respectfully slap me into another dimension if I were to stray away from the goal. Every document in our company is public, and everything about what is our path to 10,000,000, what is our path to 50,000,000, and what is our path to 100,000,000 and then a 1,000,000,000, all of that has been written. I'm not saying we don't revise it, but it has been written so that when we hire these amazing people who have been wronged in the past, and we tell them the first thing that people do is an open letter that's written by me to all the Kintsugi employees. I tell them hold me accountable. And then it's it's a matter of, like, my my colleagues basically saying, yo, go back and eat this.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And it's a very humbling experience. You know? Like, I'm 32 and I have the title of, like, the CEO and it it sometimes feels really, really fucking good. But also, internally, we are like, no. I just go by Pooch.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Just, like, force me and, like and and and and we jam because they're my people. Right? They're on my side.
Michael Houck:What are you looking for in those people? How do you know they're they're your people?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think what I look for is very high like, of course, they should be world class, like, software engineers, world class marketers, world class insert x. But what I'm looking for in people are honestly, like, people who have been slighted in the past, who who are in situations where they tried their best to make this company go from x to 100 x or a 1000 x, but they were held back. I think focusing on failures and seeing how people respond to failures is much more important on focusing on successes. So one thing that we take very seriously given that we are remote first company is how open and collaborative people are and how willing to lean in our people when it comes to getting shit done. Like, if somebody posts something on Slack, who is the person accountable being like, I will drive this to the finish line.
Michael Houck:I love that. Those are self motivated, driven people who are gonna hold you accountable.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, we are sacrificing a lot for this company and and our vision is to help businesses sell globally because if peep small businesses sell globally, they make more money. If they make more money, more local and sales taxes collected. As a result, more money goes back into society.
Pujun Bhatnagar:You get better roads, better infrastructure, better, like, playgrounds, swimming pools for kids, etcetera. And I think that's a noble goal to, like, strive for.
Michael Houck:Well, you're on your way. Right? I mean, I think I saw that you guys doubled your valuation in 3 months. Is that true?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Yes.
Michael Houck:How's that come about? That's crazy.
Pujun Bhatnagar:We raised our a at a 40,000,000 post. And by the way, like, we had other options, and we we decided to raise from the folks that we decided to raise because we didn't wanna dilute ourselves or over dilute ourselves to a point where there would be cash just sitting in the bank. And then I think given that Kintsugi has this, like, reputation of how much we are investing in AI and how much are we investing in the tech, I think when a strategic like Airwallex came and they talked to each and every competitor of ours who is building in the space, and they saw our APIs and our integrations and our customer feedback, they were like, we wanna be part of this journey. And and while I'm not at the liberty of talking about what is further to come, But I think if you think that was amazing, we are just getting started. So, Adi and my friend, some really exciting things that we are cooking.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But I I I will share this with you. I think, like, ideas come dime a dozen, but how do you execute them is is what makes the difference. I think oftentimes I talk to, like, perhaps more younger founders, and they are like, hey. This idea is unique. And I have the theory that no idea is unique.
Pujun Bhatnagar:It's the way you approach the idea is what makes it unique. It's I think the execution. It's like the a by a day, the choices that you're making either puts your company on a different positive level or it breaks your company down. So these fundamental decisions are the decision trees that make.
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Michael Houck:Yeah. The difference between getting 1% better and 1% worse every day is huge over
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah.
Michael Houck:A decent timeline.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Exactly. So I think that is with that in mind and having a north star defined of, like, this is the only problem that we are solving even though there are other sexier problems. I'm like, good. Great.
Pujun Bhatnagar:We are not solving that. Like, if you wanna solve that, Kintsugi is not the right place for you. Like, no hard feelings, but this is what we are solving is, I think, supremely important.
Michael Houck:You mentioned not wanting to over dilute at the a. I think that's interesting because some folks would say, you know, when you're a or before, dilution doesn't matter too much. Just go for a certain partner. You know, go for the the the blue chip tier 1, firm as your partner and take a shot at it because of the network or the connections or or what have you. What explain to me the the difference of why maybe that's wrong.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think I have enough logos on my resume. And I I I at the end of the days, yes, those logos help, but they cannot overcompensate for a lack of product, a lack of engineering, and a lack of something working. Yes. You'll get more introductions. Yes.
Pujun Bhatnagar:All of those things play a part. I'm not gonna sit here and say, no. It doesn't matter. Right. But you know what matters?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Something that just works.
Michael Houck:That's true. At the end of the day, if you get organic growth, everything else is around the air.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. And and and and that's my belief. Like, I think there are, like, entrepreneurs who optimize for that hype that they have and the aura that you get by raising from all these marquee logos. I think for us, it's like again, what are we what is the north star? We are helping businesses of all sizes sell globally, which means out of state, out of nation, etcetera, and we are doing compliance.
Pujun Bhatnagar:There's no mention of who are we raising money from. It's not there. So what are you ruthlessly prioritizing? Why is Pujan's ego coming into the way of, like, hey. This money is more better than that money.
Pujun Bhatnagar:You're
Michael Houck:not looking at it from a vanity perspective. You're looking at it from just an objective. What's the right decision for the business based on where we're at perspective?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Exactly.
Michael Houck:When you're going as fast as you guys are going, you know, you're the exponential curve is starting, gonna hit true hypergrowth already sort of experiencing the early signs of that. Everything must be breaking. I imagine. Right? How do you ruthlessly prioritize when everything that you've already built?
Michael Houck:It's probably breaking.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think that's a massive kudos to Jeff and Barkin. We actually do not have breakages in our code and in our services because we do not have a backlog of bugs. So any bug that comes into the system, people drop everything and they fix the bug. And that's why, like, doubling down on r and d is hugely important for us rather than saying let's put duct tape and wire and come back to it.
Michael Houck:So not just solving it with some easy fix that's not gonna hold, but actually investing the time and updating the system?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Investing the time updating the system, rewriting, like like, bunch of, like, code that used to scale for a 1000 customers, but it's not gonna scale for a 100000 customers. Really investing in the r and d. And that's what at first, you know, people were like, Pujan, you're like, you were working on smart and sexy problems, and now you're doing sales tax. The my dude. Any problem when you're dealing with billions, if not multi billions and petabytes of data become interesting challenges.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Like, how do I share show somebody's true sales tax liabilities and do the calculation in 3 minutes. No matter if they have 120 transactions or 2 and a half 1000000000 transactions. There's a publicly listed company today that is live on Kintsugi that uses Kintsugi. We get 250,000 orders of for coming from 1 organization per day for that company. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:So how do you process that data? And that's why it's a data company. And, like, other people say no to them because they're like, oh, there's a human being in the loop. And you know what? After a 1000000 rows, Excel running on the best Windows laptop also gives away, and that's why you need to write things that scale.
Michael Houck:You have this vision of what it's gonna take to hit 10,000,000, 50,000,000, a 100,000,000, a 100,000,000,000, and you guys are on your way. You're serving these giant customers already. You're solving these technical problems. What is the biggest challenge to reaching that $1,000,000,000,000 level that you talked about earlier?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think the biggest challenge to, reaching that $1,000,000,000,000 is building a sustainable business. Instead of optimizing for those logos and brands and heights, essentially building something that is bigger than all of us. Building that something valuable. I think that, like, unless the company is in a very niche field, once you're doing more than a $1,000,000,000 in revenue, you can expand into other categories that would unlock the 10,000,000,000 opportunity. And then the $50,000,000,000 opportunity and a $100,000,000,000 opportunity.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Right? But what happens is more often than not, because of the shortcuts that, like, founders and companies take, which makes sense in that in in the time and place, they do not build things that can scale. Like, we use serverless everywhere. So a lot of our problems is, oh, we got a larger client that is paying us more money because they have exponentially more amount of data. I can go because of the choices I've made, because I'm a nerd, and so is everyone else on the team.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Because we are very good at what we do, we can add more AWS machines to solve that problem faster. But that algorithm was written in a way that the only bottleneck is the amount of machines we can throw at it. Right? And I think that is where a lot of companies start collapsing when they reach that $100,000,000 or a $1,000,000,000 because they're burning too quickly. They're saying that they're a tech solution when they're not.
Pujun Bhatnagar:They do not have a north star. People are tired, man. Like, even $30,000,000 is life changing money if you have that in the bank. You gotta sit and ask yourself, are you happy with that? Because I'm not.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And like I said, I think people do not understand me, and I've, in some sense, just given up. You saw me in New York. I I'm just like I'd like I I don't understand how other people think and, like, I'm like, okay, cool biz. Maybe something is wrong with my brain, but I have one brain and I know how to live with it, and I know how to use it.
Michael Houck:No. I I think we need to protect your brain at all costs, man. We need a few more a few more of your brain out there in the world.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But again, like, I I just I just wanna take this moment to thank you. I still remember the feedback that you gave us in HackHouse and the way you were approaching the problem of, like, hey, this is why it will work. This is why it won't work. And here are the crystal reasons why. I think the world is full of nice people.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Very nice people, but hear me out. I don't think nice people are the best people to surround yourself with. I think it's the kind people that you need in your life who can tell you respectfully that, hey, what you're doing is not gonna work in x y z ways. And tell you why you're gonna fail so that you can revise your approach and keep that constant loop on. And I still remember sitting in the backside of you're sitting on an outside table under the sun, it was in Gramercy Park.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I I came and talked to you, and you were like, look, man. These are the four reasons they won't work. Right? And that's a gift.
Michael Houck:Yeah. And I loved that you then were able to take that and go and build something that did work, and you guys took through to an acquisition. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. I mean, like, I think, like, that was a great journey in of itself. But what we realized was, I think, how do you approach problems? It's just like, if you really truly wanna build a $1,000,000,000,000 company, what space should you be building in? Is the sexy things of the world where I could I could use my AI background and my logos and whatnot, and perhaps build an AI company that does get sold for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars, which is gonna be an amazing outcome, but that's not what I'm going for.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I am I am hungry, and I'm relentless. And I'm very, very big headed.
Michael Houck:One thing that I think you and I can relate on and maybe share some expertise to or share some knowledge with people who are, who are listening is, you know, you've been in AI since before LLMs were a thing, before transformers were a thing, back when it was called machine learning, and that was all we knew. And, you know, everyone's using XGBoost for everything, calling it a day. I was at Uber at the time, and we were doing, you know, various ML related things too. Curious from your perspective what the difference is between the ML Gold Rush and the LLM Gold Rush now.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think for me and and, like, perhaps I'll I'll get a little nerdier with you for a second. I do not see things as ML or LLM or otherwise. I just everything all of this is applied statistics. All of this is applied statistics done on scale, and we are just using different models of statistics to model things. And the better modeling we do about the problems that we are trying to solve, the better the output is.
Pujun Bhatnagar:So that's the fundamental thing. Like, you need to have a core, very good understanding of statistics. That being said, let's talk about transformers and LLMs. They work because we are finally able to, on a hardware level and on a data level, be able to model language, how our brains think about. We're thinking about constantly what is the next word I should say in the context of what is being told.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And that is what an LLM is doing. And then we make certain assumptions and whatnot. With these fundamental changes, I think the biggest unlock for AI was not the algorithms, and maybe I'll get crucified for this. It was actually the data and the computing that enabled these found foundational models to be applied to these large corpuses of texts. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:So the web 2.0 had to happen. The cloud computing had to happen. The race to the bottom where, like, there are couple of oligopolies, Amazon and Google GCP who are winning the lion's share of computing had to happen to make it so cheap that a nerdy person like me sitting in on my MacBook Air SSH ing into a machine is able to build these models and build these fundamental models. With that comes the ML Gold Rush because some of it is warranted because now we have data. Steve Jobs put a supercomputer in our pocket in 2,006, and that was a step function.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Same way these LLMs are starting to generalize where these are the next piece of human evolution. That being said, I think there are a lot of people here who are trying to sell snake oil. Right? And that always happens. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:When medicine was discovered, a lot of people were like, drink this potion and you'll feel x y z waste. Right? It's just a sad truth of reality. And when money is involved, especially huge amounts of money is involved, hype gets created. But I think, like, I go back to like, I got incredibly lucky when I, like, ran into Percy, my my Stanford advisor, was he was like, we are not gonna buy into hype.
Pujun Bhatnagar:We are gonna do foundational stuff, the hard stuff. But if you are willing to go on this journey on the foundational stuff, you're gonna learn things, these Lego blocks that would fundamentally change how you look at data, how you look at modeling, and how you look at building these Lego pieces together.
Michael Houck:How do you identify that snake oil? Right? Maybe you're less technical than you are. How does somebody say this actually isn't gonna be as valuable for my business, or I shouldn't invest in this. Right?
Michael Houck:How do you identify snake oil in AI?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think the way to identify snake oil in AI is daily pressure test. I think instead of saying believing the different scenarios, like, actually go sit with the whatever the UI interface that the AI is using and ask the questions in the problem domain that it's claiming to solve. There are some obvious things. Right? If chat GPD says I can give you an answer to anything in the world, I'd be like, okay.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Cool. The first thing I'll do is I'll start talking in Japanese and see how how well it translates, right, in the context. So there are some obvious, like, we are not there yet. I know we wanna be there where we are talking to terminators and machines, but we are not. But the other things is, like, really ask people and sit down and have a whiteboard and say, hey, teach me and walk me through as a 4th grader, what is your model doing as a 4th grader?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And if they're using big terms like transformers and LLMs and data extraction and whatnot, be like, you're respectfully, like, explain to me like a 3rd grader. And if they're not able to, that means, a, either they're lying, b, which is even worse is they do not themselves understand what is happening. I think it was Richard Feynman who said this, like, very poignantly. If a professor of any kind cannot explain a concept to you as if you're a 3rd grader, they themselves do not understand what is going on. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:So if a if a VC, like, asked me to, like, walk into a room and be like, yo, explain to me, like, a 3rd grader, what are you doing and how is this different from whatever the everyone else is doing? And if I am not able to do that as a cofounder and and as a CEO, then I have to do the hard work. And I think people do not bring it back to the basics when they should. They get scared with these big equation, and they're like, oh, one shot ML and whatnot. And I'm like, hold on.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Like, let's let's let's go back to pluses and minuses and walk me through the math. And took 10 minutes. 10 minutes.
Michael Houck:Do you think that CEOs now, especially in AI, but maybe just in general, do you think CEOs are better equipped to have a technical background than they were 10 years ago? Again, another point of crucifixion maybe,
Pujun Bhatnagar:If you're building a tech company and you're not technical CEO, like, what the are you? I'm I'm I'm sorry. Like, especially as a founder. I understand the non founders. I really do.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But as a founder, if you're building a tech company, as a founder or a cofounder, why the hell do you need a CEO? And I I'm just being honest. Like, I don't think I would serve a purpose at Kintsugi. It has become bigger than me, and I do not think I would serve a purpose if I didn't have the understanding that I do.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I mean, that aligns with what Mark Andreessen said even 15 years ago when he was saying, you know, the he wrote a blog post that was like, how to hire a professional CEO. And there was just, like, 1 or 2 sentences, and it was basically, like, don't do it.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I'll I'll I'll share another anecdote with you. I think if I was not technical, I would have a lot more fights with my CTO and my CPO because I'd be like, why the we do we need to spend so much money? Why are we spending 1,000,000 of dollars on r and d to do this when I can do this in Python script? Uh-huh. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And, yeah, you can do that, but that would not scale for x y z reasons that a nontechnical person would not understand or not care to understand.
Michael Houck:Okay. One other thing I wanna talk to you about is dropping out of academia. I was gonna touch on this earlier, but we we moved on. You've dropped out 3 times.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I dropped out twice. It's not a competition.
Michael Houck:You got me beat, man. Do you think that I mean, you dropped out of Sloan and then basically was working on a startup and then jumped back in to Harvard MBA just a couple months later. Why go back after dropping out of Sloan and then yeah. Just why go back after dropping out of Sloan so quickly?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I I don't think I talked about it enough, and I'll I'll preface by saying all the love to MIT community and whatnot, great school. US makes it exponentially hard for immigrants to work on their startups. For somebody like me who has been in the US for since they were 17, huge portion of my undergrad was paid for by US taxpayer dollars. Even my PhD, which again, I ended up dropping out of, Stanford and then Sloan Fellowship, I I had as well. But I was very clear from the get go that while I usually respect people who go into consulting, PE, VC, PM roles, that is not why I was at an MBA school.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I was there because I'm a technical person, and I needed to understand the basic one on one about entrepreneurship and businesses to be able to start my company. And there is a false promise that, like, these MBA schools say, hey, we teach you entrepreneurship. But have you ever learned swimming by reading about swimming?
Michael Houck:Now you gotta jump in the pool.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. That's number 1. Number 2 is because I had already had a master's degree from my time at Stanford, MIT was not MIT Sloan admins admin staff was not okay with me working on my startup idea while still staying in the US over the summer. And again, maybe perhaps I see word the world through a different lens, But I was convinced that if I do not do this, somebody else will. Because I'm I may be smart.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I may be smarter than average, but I'm not an arrogant prick thinking that, like, oh, only Pujan can build this. But time was of essence for me. And that's why, like, when MIT was like, yo, you can go work on the startup in your home country in India. I'm like, all my connections, all my resources, everything is here in the valley. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I've given up a lot as an immigrant who is living in the US for 14 years to be here, and I am not gonna leave any stone unturned in my pursuit to be successful. So that with the combination of, like, hey, the moment is now, I dropped out. I went back in because Harvard was a lot more supportive in terms of, like, they were like, we will support your entrepreneurship. Should you even decide to drop out, you can drop out. And they were much more pragmatic about, hey.
Pujun Bhatnagar:There's a bigger fish to fry. We wanna support you, and we'll get you your visa and your green card should you need that at the moment. So I think in in this scenario, I think Harvard Business School was more helpful to me, and I'm not making any generalizations, but they understood the startup game. And they understood the fire that they saw in me, and they understood that there's something wrong with me. That I I am willing even before joining Harvard, I'm talking about dropping out of Harvard because I see this idea.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I think they recognized that. And I'm not saying that that makes me a special person. I think that just we were on the same wavelength because I went there again to basically be like, I have not raised funds. So I I had gone into Harvard Business School. I'd gotten into MIT.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I'd gotten into other schools as well for my MBA, and I reached out to them and I was like, look, I said no to you, and I had gone to Sloan, but I think I made the wrong call. I think I have an idea that would work, but I need help with my visa. Can you help or not? And I think they were mature enough to be like,
Michael Houck:yes. So then fast forward a few months, you end up dropping. I think this was around the time that you did Hackhouse, if I'm remembering timeline correctly. What happened in those few months? It was like, I'm gonna go all in.
Michael Houck:It's time to to do this.
Pujun Bhatnagar:There was product market fit. And when you see that product market fit, you drop everything and you run. Sometimes, like, I think the best way to explain my personality is I'm a beggar at heart. I just and, like, I don't think there would be any others perhaps, I could be wrong, but I don't think any other CEO would want to call themselves beggar.
Michael Houck:Mhmm.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But I I truly am. I I just think that, like, I got incredibly lucky that somebody recognized my hard work and gave me the opportunities that I got. And I had a very supportive, very, very supportive mom who put everything on the back burner to make me who I am today. So, like, I'm really grateful for that, but when you have that opportunity in hand, it's just like, you know, you need to be relentless. You need to be unwavering, and you need to just go for it.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I think a lot of people are scared of taking risks, and I do not understand those people. But for me, it's like I'm scared of missing out. I'm just like trying to minimize that feeling of what if I had done that? What if I had put that thing in? And I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Pujun Bhatnagar:It's just this is the only way I know how to operate in life. Truly, this is like I'm I'm not saying that I'm a big person that needs to be studied or whatnot, but I I I personally have thought about, like, what drives me and what makes me me. Yeah. I think I went even when I address my company and, like, anyone who joins, I say I operate, like, I operate like a beggar. I am hungry.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I am relentless, and I'm unyielding. I'll be the who, if you tell me no, I will come to you and come to you with 6 different suggestions and 3 recommendations and one strong recommendation of how we can approach this in this other other way. Because I am not gonna give up the opportunity that has been given to me. That's a slap in the face to everyone who did not get that opportunity, and that's even a bigger slap in the face for people who sacrificed their lives, their careers, their everything for to make sure that I am who I am today. That is what I owe to them.
Michael Houck:It's an incredibly compassionate mindset that also enables you to go after, you know, the things that are in front of you and the things that you want. It's amazing.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. And one of those people are is is is you. Like, I I still remember I applied to, like, HackHouse late, and you you took a chance on me. Right? And I would be Yeah.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I would be I would be forever grateful for that. Right? These, like, little things, they do not make sense in the moment, but only when you turn around, it's like you connect the dots, you get that feedback. I met some incredible minds like Sahar's in hack house, right, who is doing his own amazing startup. And it's like, made some incredible friends, like, Sahar, Sahil to name a few.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And just like the fact that people are building. Go build. Go launch. And I'm not saying I'm not sitting on a ivory, like, throne and saying I made it. No.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I could go down tomorrow, but you know what keeps me up at night? It keeps me up at night is am I performing at my 150%. It never keeps me up at night that, like, oh, am I doing too much? And that is how I op operate. What do you
Michael Houck:do when you notice you're not
Pujun Bhatnagar:at your 150%? I think sometimes I just I soak my head in water is the first reaction and wash my face. Oftentimes, I'm just hungry and dehydrated, and I just need sleep. So I just there are times when I'm just like, world is ending, and I tell my loved ones, and they're like, okay. Just go to bed.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And and then go to bed, then I I have a solution to it. There's always a solution to it. And I think when I'm frustrated, what I found is talking to founders like you. I think a founder community is so hugely important. And I'm not talking about the accelerators.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Like, accelerators have their own incentives unless they are, like, nonprofits like Startex, in which case, like, yes, you should do them. Like, hack house. Like, you guys did not take any equity. Right? Like, again, people should do it.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I have thoughts about accelerators that do take equity, and I think you can guess what. But for me, I think have your select small group of founders who you can ping on Thursday at 3 o'clock and be like, does anyone wanna grab a drink? Does anyone wanna talk? Because in that message at a 2 PM, You drop everything and you're like, my homie is going through some stuff, and we are gonna grab a drink, and we are gonna figure this out, or we are gonna jump on a call. And there are times when I bring up my problems and my my founder friends are like, shut the up.
Pujun Bhatnagar:This is how you approach it. I'll get now take your shot or whatnot. But it's starting a company and running a company is incredibly lonely, and you need your people. You just do. Yeah.
Pujun Bhatnagar:That's that's why we
Michael Houck:started Launch House and HackHouse in the first place. It was, during the pandemic. Everyone was everyone was lonely. We're like, well, let's, let's bring them together.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. And and I think, like, even your newsletter. Right? Like, what is happening? It shows that, like, you know, you're not the only one who's building in this space.
Pujun Bhatnagar:People are making new moves, and I think game sharpens as a game. So I wanna we're we're getting we're getting close to
Michael Houck:the end here. I wanna go in a totally the one eighty direction for a second, which is you are not only a startup founder.
Michael Houck:You're also a spice mogul.
Michael Houck:Do you wanna talk about your curated collection of spices here?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Definitely. Definitely. I think burlap and barrel have been a big fan of their spices since I remember. And I think Ollie, who's one of the founders, incredible person who I met at a conference. And we you know, I'm I'm not the most, like, outgoing bro y person that I'll talk to everyone in the room.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I like, yes, I'm I'm social. I'll go say hi and whatnot. But we've very much nerded out about the fact that he has a spice company, and he he has built a software company. He has been a VC. He has seen it all, and then he, like, started the spice company.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And after talking to him for, like, 2, 3 hours, I was like, man, I wish I had a way to just sending gifts to my friends, which are, like, the spice collection because all of my friends, they come from different backgrounds, different parts of the world, and they're like, I really wanna cook Indian food. And I'm like, you look at their pantry and you you see only sea salt, and you're like, what the can I do with this Right? So I think it was it was that. And, like, it also is a chance to give back because any person who ordered anything on that link, I I personally, not through Kintsugi, but I personally did a 100% donation match. And I I don't make a ton of money.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I have a founder salary, but it's like, with all the negativity in the world, I think, like, when somebody sits down and enjoys a delicious meal and I'm not this person who is like, oh, is this authentic or not? Like, if you like butter chicken, go ahead. Go crazy. Eat butter chicken, maybe. And you have my blessing.
Pujun Bhatnagar:But I want people when they're sitting and they're cons they're, like, having food or having these experiences, they feel good. And I think that that was just, like, a lighthearted positive way of creating some good in the world.
Michael Houck:People gotta go check out the the spice collections on your LinkedIn. Okay. Couple rapid fire ones here to to wrap this up. 1st, who is an investor that other founders should take money from?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think I would say I have been in incredibly lucky. I would say, like, Linus from Kybernet, Rahul from Venture Highway, who is now at General Catalyst. I think they just got their entire portfolio bought. And I would say, like, Lisa from, from Link Ventures. All these people, I think nobody's perfect, but these people are truly like people and, that, like, I can call and butt heads with, but I know that they have my back.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I think that's incredibly important. Do not optimize for logos. I I'd say, I think the more you're optimizing for logos, you'd be 1 in a 1000 companies that are on their portfolio. And unless you are on that success rate, they'll not pay attention to you because, again, they have bigger fish to fry. Just think from their perspective.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Right? They're in the business to make money. I think those investors are important. Angels are usually important. And more important than angels are customers.
Pujun Bhatnagar:If a customer says, hey, I'll put in $1,000 in your company because I believe in the vision, you take that money
Michael Houck:no matter what. Take that money so fast.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's that's that's usually important.
Michael Houck:It's also just a great signal to other investors too. What's one thing that you'd change about the startup world?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think the one thing I would change about the startup world is I think I would focus on more diverse representation. Like, I think it's heavily skewed towards males. It's a like, the founder community is, like, sort of stacked up against females. And I just think just from a statistics standpoint, there are amazing ideas that are waiting to happen that never happened because we don't give female founders an equal chance. Just statistically, we don't.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And I think we are we as humanity are probably missing out on 50% of our efficiency by doing that.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I think I I remember a statistic that, like, something like 2% of venture capital funding goes to female founded companies. And we actually we thought about that at Launch House, and that's why we had over 20%. I think it was 29% of all of our members were were
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. And I think the other thing I would change is, like, at a pre seed level, VCs should just stop asking for data rooms. Just just shut up. Just shut up. Like, we all know you're, like, looking at 3 things.
Pujun Bhatnagar:You're looking at product market fit. You're looking at founder market fit, and you're looking at the size of the market. Yep. PCs who are like, can you share your data room? And you just sometimes, I feel like telling them, like, yo, you're investing at a pre seed level.
Pujun Bhatnagar:This this is an idea. You you take it or you leave it. Stop making this more complicated and stop trying to sound more scientific than you are. This is a bet. You wanna bet?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Bet. Otherwise, don't. It's fine.
Michael Houck:It's like, are you gonna back me or not, basically?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Like like yeah. Like, stop wasting my time. Stop wasting your time. We both know what's happening.
Pujun Bhatnagar:I I just like, I I advise, some start ups such like Startex, and they're like, oh, they're asking for my data room. Oh, things are going so well. And I'm like, wait. Hold up. The what data room, my dude?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Like, my brother in Christ. There's no data. This is an idea. Either they're signing the tech or not. And I think founders get get, like, defensive, and they're like, no push in there, like, this close.
Pujun Bhatnagar:And then I talk to them 4 weeks, and they're like, oh, it fell through. And I'm like, protect your time, I did. Protect your time.
Michael Houck:When your when your pre seed data room is your Stripe account and your quote, and that's it.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Yeah. Like, I I I would even go as far as to say, like, don't don't even show your Stripe account. Don't even show your code. Be like, there's nothing here.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Either you're backing me or you're not. Like, just just period. I think I would draw the line there.
Michael Houck:I agree. It's it's a waste of everybody's time at that stage. Yeah. Okay. Next one.
Michael Houck:What is your number one piece of advice to a first time founder?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think first time founder, I would say don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Launch, launch, launch, launch. Stop finding this thing that inspires you, like or is finding something novel. Nothing is novel in life. Like, the only thing novel is you working on the idea, and you are the person who's unique, who is gonna solve that idea in a way that has not been approached.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Those would be my 2 pieces.
Michael Houck:Last one then. What's something that you believe that most people disagree with you about?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I would say, I think, like, there's a possibility to become to make a $1,000,000,000,000 company without turning into an
Michael Houck:That's the mission. Right?
Pujun Bhatnagar:Yeah. Like, you have to be straightforward, and you have to hire and fire people if they are not doing what they need to do. But you don't have to be an about it. Like, I think people are like, no. On this journey to success, it gets to your head, but, like, it takes you to tango.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Why?
Michael Houck:Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. This was great. Tons of bombs that you dropped. I think folks will really enjoy the episode.
Michael Houck:Where can they find you? Where can they find Kintsugi?
Pujun Bhatnagar:I think, me on LinkedIn and Kintsugi's URL is just trykintsugi.com. Otherwise, just like search sales tax automation using AI, and you'll find us at the top.
Michael Houck:Cool. Love it, man. Thanks for coming on.
Pujun Bhatnagar:Cool. Thank you for having me.
Michael Houck:Thanks for listening. I write up my main takeaways from every conversation and make them available to all of our members at foundingjourney.com, along with a bunch of other perks and more content. If you found this conversation valuable, subscribe to Founding Journey on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or whatever your favorite podcast app is. I post a new episode every Thursday. Also, consider leaving us a rating or a review.
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