Akshay Kothari

🎙️ From Square to Mercury: How Rohini Pandhi became one of fintech’s top product leaders—and how velocity of learning at high slope companies shaped everything. Rohini dropped so many gems in our first episode of First Builders: 💎 Generalist → Specialist: In her early career, she was a generalist and tried everything. This led her to critical discoveries. She specialized in product and fintech when the “time was right” 💎 Follow the Engineers and Designers: Square was a high slope environment for Rohini, packed with talent density and learnings. She finds high slope environments by studying where smart engineers and designers are going. 💎 Fake News about PMs: PMs don’t just “move fast and break things.” Her team runs 30-50 customer interviews per quarter, providing rigor behind every decision. 💎 It’s Usually Too Early to Hire a PM: A top question she gets from founders is whether they should hire a PM. She usually says: “it’s too early.” 💎 Hiring a World Class Team is Like Tennis: When finding a tennis partner, you want someone a little better than you who can challenge you to improve your game. Give us a listen and leave a review on your favorite podcast location (see comments for links)! #FirstBuilders #StartupPodcast #ProductLeadership #TechCareers #Leadership

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I’ve come to believe that early experiences carry disproportionate weight - far more than we often acknowledge. For designers and builders, “minimum viable” may suffice for validating core functionality, but it rarely earns trust or sparks genuine delight. While velocity matters, I’ve always struggled with the notion that early versions should be merely viable, especially in a world where attention is scarce and emotional resonance is everything. This extends beyond product. Do you show up as the minimum viable version of yourself in your work, your relationships, your craft? I would encourage you to challenge the conventional MVP framework. Replace it with the Minimum Awesome Product. This doesn’t mean it’s fully-featured or pixel perfect. But it should be worthy of attention. Memorable, even evocative in the way it triggered emotion. The kind of product that prompts someone to say, “I didn’t know I needed this, but now I can’t live without it.” You can refine mechanics over time, but the emotional experience of a first interaction is singular and unrecoverable. Don’t settle for viability. Build something worth remembering… and make it awesome! ❤️‍🔥

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Most tech founders assume that building a strong product is enough. It isn’t. What Abhilash shared here is a pattern I keep seeing - smart builders, solid tech, but unclear on validation, positioning, and actual market readiness. The gap is rarely effort. It’s direction. 0to1 isn’t about teaching theory. It’s about forcing clarity: – Is your idea worth building? – Are you solving a real problem? – Can you sell it? Because a “good product” that doesn’t convert is just wasted time. Glad to see this shift. #StartupLessons #FounderJourney #TechFounders #BuildInPublic #StartupReality #ProductMarketFit #StartupGrowth #Entrepreneurship #0to1 #FounderLife #StartupIndia #SalesForFounders #IdeaValidation #EarlyStageStartups #B2BStartups

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Most startups don’t fail because of competition. They fail because their structure cannot support their ambition. Misaligned positioning. Unclear revenue design. Execution without systems. Growth is not acceleration. It is alignment. Structure decides scale. Black Apex Strategic Consulting for founders ready to build with discipline.

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A Founders Guide to The Long Build™ - Physical AI Thesis Part III This one is for the builders. In this final post, my partner Will Porteous and I along with insights from builders in the trenches and investors who play the long game share our guide for founders building intelligence in the real world. A few core takeaways: • Sim before steel: Runway is precious, model the system behavior • Capital intensity is not the enemy — misaligned capital is • Build complete solutions before you talk platform • Hardware opens the door, software wins the room • Trust is earned through resilience, not hype

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💡 Second Time’s the Charm? More than half of HealthTech startups are now led by serial founders. But does experience actually lead to better outcomes? We dug into the data from 8,600+ companies and the results tell a clear story. 👉 Swipe through to see: - Who’s really getting funded - How much experience matters (and when it stops helping) - What separates startups that scale from those that stall 📥 Want to see how your startup compares? Download the full Startup Nation 2025 report: https://lnkd.in/d-qA7p6 (Scroll to the middle of the page) #HealthTech #Startups #DigitalHealth #SerialFounders #StartupNation2025 #R2GConnect

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Startup program for e2b!! Also, why is the python tool on chat interfaces absolutely the most underrated tool. Most people don’t even know they can use python on zerotwo.ai to edit their videos and images, convert file types, do advanced math for analyzing large files of data, and more!

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Figma files for an IPO, plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker FIG, and reports Q1 revenue up 46% YoY to $228.2M and net income up 233% YoY to $44.9M 

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We just launched Design Diff on Product Hunt. We actually set out to solve a problem for ourselves as we were building Floto. We'd ship a feature. Check staging. Something would be off — spacing wrong, button the wrong color, modal doesn't match the frame. Either our designer spends hours documenting every deviation, creating tickets, annotating screenshots... or we ship fast as is and backlog things to fix later. We did both. Neither really works. The past couple of months, we thought Figma MCP + Claude Code would solve this. It didn't. Sometimes it made things worse — implementations drifted further because "the AI was handling it." So we built Design Diff. Started out as a web app, but we've now added a Chrome extension too. How it works: Chrome extension captures implementation direct from browser → Link your Figma frame (no exports needed) → AI + pixel-level analysis finds every deviation → Get categorized issues with side-by-side comparisons → Push to Linear/Jira in one click with screenshots Turns out this wasn't just our problem. Many designers we spoke to had the same frustration: implementations never quite match designs, and catching those differences is soul-crushing manual work. If you've felt this pain, I'd love to hear about it. And if Design Diff could solve something real for you, your upvote / comment would mean the world - we're live on Product Hunt today. Free to try today, no card required. Link in comments 👇 Prashant Pooja Ishan Deepak Shaleen Illai

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Series B founders face a perfect storm: - Growth outpaces org design - Early hires hit ceilings - Culture frays across time zones - Ops lag behind momentum Bhavani Raman, co-founder of Element5 (a Series B startup) and Pionyr founding member, overcame scaling challenges by treating growth like an engineering problem. Here’s how and how you can too: 👉 Build culture and structure before growth Element5 hired seasoned execs early, used OKRs for alignment, and prioritized cross-cultural integration from day one 👉Solve scaling with repeatable systems When Mexico ops hit roadblocks, they templated support, redistributed roles, and built global playbooks. 👉 Focus narrowly to win big Doubling down on post-acute healthcare automation helped them land 9 of the top 10 providers 👉Make process your operating system of growth OKRs became their backbone; and scalable operational tools turned chaos into cadence managing complexity at scale 👉 Don’t scale alone After nearly burning out at her first startup, she turned to domain experts, complementary partners, and candid support from investors and advisors Read the full story for deeper insights. Link in comments. What’s been your biggest post-Series B challenge? 👇 Follow Pionyr for actionable founder insights.

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You don’t need a patent to know you’re right Just a well-funded competitor rushing to catch up. At PreSkale, we launched a feature to help leaders track SE utilization in real-time. Not a big launch. No PR splash. Just a fast solve for a real problem. A quarter later, a well-funded competitor launched the exact thing. Slightly tweaked. Heavily marketed. No credit. No mention. We were ahead. They were watching. Usually, when something works Others will follow even if they’d never admit it. I see that pattern repeat with teams using Storylane Early teams simplify buying with interactive demos Soon after, others follow. It’s a quiet reminder: the teams closest to the buyer usually move first. But those who led early? They’re already on the next move. When someone bigger quietly copies you. Take the hit. Then build what’s next.

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Friends in #healthcare, need your help! What are your favorite communities for #builders or #AIengineers in healthcare? Here’s the ones we’ve mapped at Klira AI: Health Tech Nerds (HTN) - 6,000+ Slack community of healthtech builders & founders. PM’s in Healthcare - 1,000+ product & engineering minds across health tech startups. Great for tech stack, HIPAA & build vs. buy conversations. Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) - Focused on digital therapeutics, AI governance & regulatory topics. Essential for teams building in regulated environments. Mental Health Startup Community - 3,000+ founders, engineers & investors in mental health & telehealth. Niche but highly relevant if you’re building in behavioral health. AI Product Hive -1,000+ tech professionals building AI products. Good for real-world GenAI implementation strategies & use cases. AI Tinkerers - A global community of 89,000 AI engineers and researchers building real systems, sharing unfinished work, and pushing the practical limits of modern models. Any missing from my list?

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On the latest episode of Embracing Erosion I sat down with Suyog Deshpande, Co-Founder & CEO of Webless (a Fluvio Ventures portfolio company). Before starting Webless, Suyog spent years at Amplitude, Salesforce, and Samsara - shaping products and GTM strategy at scale as a product marketing leader. That perspective is now fueling one of the boldest bets in tech: 🏗️ rebuilding the web for LLMs. Instead of optimizing for clicks and SEO, Webless imagines an agentic web -where sites are designed to interact directly with AI models and agents. We dug into: - What an LLM-native web could actually look like - How companies can prepare to be LLM-ready - What metrics will matter beyond pageviews and clicks - Why safety and trust are core to agent-driven experiences - Lessons Suyog brings from “big tech” into this transformation If you’re curious about how discovery, trust, and value exchange will evolve online, this one’s worth your time. Link to the full episode in the comments 👇

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We’re no longer designing screens; we’re designing Interface-DNA. When I first explored writing metadata for an A2UI-enabled Design System, my focus was on compliance. How does Generative UI remain 'safe' for RegTech, FinTech, and HealthTech? How do we ensure AI doesn't forget a legal disclaimer or break a core accessibility rule? And my initial approach became too governed and too rigid, it resulted in a UI-Retrieval Engine - a system that simply fetched pre-designed 'organisms' via deterministic orchestration and hardcoded blueprints. For many SaaS products, UI-Retrieval is the right move. It uses LLMs for intent-based navigation while remaining 100% compliant. But what happens when we have an ‘explosion of context’ and endless intents, in this case designing a static blueprint for every possible user state is mathematically impossible. Therefore I asked myself, if an LLM understands our atomic components, user intent, and data, what’s missing? Interface-DNA. What separates Company A’s GenUI from Company B’s? I believe it goes deeper than just saying ‘colours and spacing’. To generate a cohesive system, the machine needs an understanding of our Taste. We can achieve this through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), training AI to abstract our architectural decision-making in varying scenarios. I’m still researching this area but theorise Interface-DNA might look like this: {   "aesthetic_weights": { "optical_balance": 0.95, "information_density": 0.4, "border_radius_logic": "harmonic_scaling" },   "geometric_constants": { "base_unit": 4, "phi_ratio_application": true, "contrast_floor": 5.1 }  } When we add a new 'Voice Recorder' molecule, the system doesn't need a manual; it follows a genetic code. It’s a logic layer governing tokens in real-time - like media queries, our DNA becomes a dynamic equation that generates cohesive outcomes regardless of the UI complexity. I’m looking to join a team building this future - balancing the reliability of retrieval with the intelligence of generation. If you are looking for someone with infinite curiosity and a vision for the 2026 stack, I would love to talk. #GenerativeUI #DesignSystems #A2UI #DesignEngineering 

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As founders, year-end wraps are not about celebrating milestones, they are about checking whether the direction compounds.   2025 was a year of execution at ideazmeet. Not growth for growth’s sake, but building the underlying rails required for a manufacturing ecosystem to scale.   Our focus stayed deliberate: • Expanding the network with manufacturers who actively engage (28,000+) • Moving beyond discovery into repeat workflows and real collaboration • Investing early in AI-led flows that reduce friction instead of adding layers • Building credibility through ecosystem conversations, not noise   One signal we are paying close attention to as we enter 2026 is that more sourcing conversations are beginning to progress beyond intent and into execution-ready workflows.   That transition matters.    Manufacturing does not fail due to lack of supply or demand. It fails in the handoff between trust, context, and delivery.   What is becoming clear is that workflows proven in India’s fragmented manufacturing base translate naturally to global sourcing corridors. Some of that execution is now starting to take shape, with a focus on closing the gap between discovery and delivery. 2026 is about depth, stronger execution, cleaner handoffs, and scaling what already works.    #ManufacturingTech #B2B #DigitalInfrastructure #MakeInIndia #ideazmeet #dotsupply  

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𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗬𝗲𝘁 SCENE: Two seasoned product leaders, Meera and Rajiv, sit at a quiet corner of a conference hall after a long day of panels. Coffee in hand, jackets slightly undone, they begin an unscripted debate. RAJIV (half-smiling): I heard someone say today - “Creativity in PM leads to gains beyond the incremental.” Sounds nice enough for applause. But in practice? It feels like a poster, not a roadmap. MEERA (raising an eyebrow): You really believe that? That creativity doesn’t move the needle? That PM is just execution, discipline, and distribution? RAJIV (shrugging): Not exactly. Creativity matters. But it’s overrated. In twenty years, I’ve seen more disasters from “creative leaps” than successes. Creativity eats cash and morale far quicker than it produces outcomes. MEERA (leaning forward): And in my twenty years, I’ve seen the opposite. Execution gives you survival. Creativity - when fused with execution - bends markets. Without creativity, PMs are traffic cops. With it, they create leaps. RAJIV (chuckling): Markets don’t bend that easily. For every Slack, there’s a HipChat. For every Tesla, a Fisker. Creativity is high variance. The rare hits look like genius. The common misses look like hubris. MEERA: Variance, yes. But that’s the point. Slack, Notion, Tesla - they weren’t just creative products. They reframed the problem. They created new lenses. That kind of creativity doesn’t give you 1% gains. It gives you 10x. RAJIV (serious now): But most “creative” ideas? They fail because the market isn’t ready. Google Glass was creative. Dead in two years. MEERA: Or maybe Glass failed because the go-to-market wasn’t creative. Creativity isn’t just product. It’s also in how you test, ship, narrate. Execution without reframing will keep you alive. Reframing with discipline creates leaps. RAJIV (pausing): So maybe it’s not creativity versus execution. It’s creativity to expand the option space. Execution to narrow it. Both are necessary. The art lies in knowing when to let each lead. MEERA (pointing her finger, almost playfully): And that’s where I’ll disagree. Because discipline alone creates survivability. Creativity - when wielded with discipline - creates category leadership. The best PMs don’t just optimize funnels. They imagine funnels that don’t exist yet. RAJIV (after a long pause, sighing with a grin): Fine, let’s call it: creativity without discipline is chaos. Discipline without creativity is stagnation. The multiplier is in the fusion. MEERA (raising her cup): Exactly. Incremental gains are survival. Creative leaps - if disciplined - are how you bend markets. RAJIV (clinking his cup to hers, smirking): Fine. You win the philosophy. But in hiring? I’ll still test for execution first. Creativity is only valuable if it rides on rigor. MEERA (grinning): And I’ll still test for imagination first. Execution can be taught. Vision rarely can.

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