It’s me again.
Normally you wouldn’t hear from me again til Saturday, but I just had to get this great convo with Arjun Mahadevan, the founder of the YC-backed Doola (valued at $100M) who has helped over 10,000 founders start their companies, out there ASAP.
Along the way he’s built an audience of over 80,000 people across X and LinkedIn, and we cover it all, from fundraising to starting your company to building an audience.
Here’s our full convo:
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Founder Mode
(00:00), Intro
(04:09), Fundraising skills applications to life
(05:07), Creating a founder brand
(06:35), How Arjun is thinking about AI
(12:07), Advice to a first-time founder
(24:31), What Arjun took from working at Dropbox
(26:35), Dealing with failure as a 1st-time founder
Fundraising
(01:13), How to raise $1M in 2 minutes
(14:45), Going through OnDeck & Y Combinator
(17:59), doola’s value prop
(21:03), doola’s pivot during YC batch
Startup Strategy & Operations
(08:01), Why doola niched down to E-commerce
(10:21), Why data isn’t as actionable as we think
(30:25), Importance of asymmetric upside
(44:08), How to know when to build vs. partner with external vendors
(46:36), Incorporation
(50:38), Importance of bookkeeping
Growth
(32:38), The content funnel
(35:25), Creating content for systems
(37:45), Content platforms to be excited about
(41:09), Why any problem can be solved by talking to customers
Rapid Fire
(53:23), Who is one investor you’d recommend?
(53:44), One thing you’d change about startups?
(54:29), Advice for first-time founders?
(55:33), Something you believe that most disagree with?