Ajay Singh’s Post

I am excited to announce that Pepsales has closed its Pre-Seed round led by Chiratae Ventures 🙌 🙌 At Pepsales, we have always focused on the customer obsessed mindset and speed of execution. When Ajay Singh and I decided to build Pepsales, we knew that the odds were against us and we needed to have the right partners for our long journey 🏇 🏇 I am always driven by basic tenets: learning fast, improving constantly, and building with speed. The journey of a startup is anything but predictable, and while we’re still at Day 0, the one thing that’s clear is this—getting here has been a team effort. The road ahead is long, and this is just the first step. I’m incredibly grateful to Venkatesh Peddi, Naimil Shah and the team at Chiratae Ventures , and everyone who’s supported us in bringing Pepsales to life. Your trust means the world, and it’s given us the foundation we need to keep pushing forward. We’re here to solve real problems for sales teams—helping them make smarter decisions without getting buried under endless data. But we also know that building something meaningful takes time, effort, and the right people. That’s why this journey excites me, because it’s as much about learning and growing as it is about the product itself. ⌛ ⏳ There’s a lot more ahead, but knowing we have the right partners by our side gives me confidence in what’s to come. I’m looking forward to conversations with fellow founders and sales leaders. If you’re a B2B SaaS company looking to empower your sales teams and create a world-class experience without the data chaos, we’d love to connect and see how we can add value to your journey. #FounderJourney #DayZero #B2BSales #ContinuousLearning #Gratitude #SaaS #Pepsales #fromonedaytodayone #teampepsales Link to full article -

We’re excited to announce our seed round led by Khosla Ventures. Myko AI is a conversational AI for sales and revenue teams that instantly answers questions and builds reports from a user’s existing data sources, with an enterprise grade security you can trust. We released our conversational AI product two weeks prior to the launch of Chat GPT and built our own language model from scratch. Since then, we’ve hired an incredible team and rolled out the product to a number of companies. Reporting and analysis can still be massive pain points for most sales and revenue teams. We fixed that. With Myko, you can: - Self-serve your data and stop waiting for teammates to send you analysis  - Instantly create the reports you need, when you need them - Collaborate where you are already working in Slack and Teams - Leverage AI in a safe and secure environment - Soc 2 Type II compliant Myko automatically understands your data. It knows what columns to look in, which KPIs you care about, and how your team defines each metric. For the first 50 companies that connect Myko with their Salesforce data, we have a complimentary Salesforce Data Hygiene check. This report automatically goes through your data and finds common issues for you to flag and correct. Thank you to all of our investors at Zero Knowledge Ventures (Nicky Montana + Idan Sugarman), DayDream Ventures (Oliver Henry + Jonathan Chang), AngelList Early Stage Quant Fund, and Eugene M. Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School. You can find us on the Salesforce AppExchange!

Ballots are counted and while the results sink in, these startups have been racing forward, claiming wins of their own. If yesterday was all about decisions, today is about action and these companies are setting a new pace for the rest of us. Let’s get into the morning’s top moves: Let’s see who’s got the momentum this morning Ghost just secured $40M in funding, led by L Catterton and backed by Union Square Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Equal Ventures, and Eniac Ventures. Founders Dee Murthy and Josh Kaplan aren’t just tinkering with retail—they’re flipping the inventory game, turning dead stock into cash flow for 6,000+ brands. Ghost’s AI-powered platform is setting a new bar for inventory control, maximizing value without the discounts. Crisp closed a $72M Series B with Wellington Management and Toshiba at the helm. Founder Are Traasdahl’s team is tackling supply chain chaos, expanding reach by 36x to optimize 627 million distribution points. In a world struggling with food waste, Crisp’s data-driven forecasting isn’t just a tool—it’s a full-on movement to make CPG smarter, faster, and more profitable. Backflip raised $184M in debt capital to fuel real estate fix-and-flip deals. With Setpoint, ECMC, and Performance Trust Capital Partners in the mix, founders Jake Rome and Joshua Ernst are streamlining the fix-and-flip process with precision property scanning and integrated financing. Backflip’s platform is fast becoming the all-in-one solution real estate flippers need to succeed in today’s market. Spot AI stacked $31M in fresh funding from Qualcomm Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, StepStone Group, and Redpoint Ventures Inc. Rish Gupta, Sud B., and Tanuj Thapliyal are transforming security cameras into AI-powered tools that not only monitor but analyze. With #NVIDIA GPUs and a sleek cloud setup, Spot AI is setting a new standard in video intelligence for efficiency and safety. Melio snagged $150M in Series E funding, raising their valuation to $2B. With Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue, and General Catalyst in their corner, Melio is bringing next-level B2B payments to SMBs with seamless integrations and custom workflows. From #QuickBooks compatibility to a streamlined approval process, Melio’s transforming accounts payable for small businesses across the board. Marqii just pocketed $10M from Next Coast Ventures to keep hospitality’s digital side running smoothly. CEO Avi Goren’s platform syncs menus across 80+ sites and taps into customer sentiment data, with 12,000+ businesses using Marqii to stay updated and connected. As digital presence becomes make-or-break in hospitality, Marqii’s leading the charge. That’s your post-Election Day rundown—big moves, fresh funding, and serious momentum. Need the full scoop? Head over to my Substack👇 for deeper insights. #RetailTech #SupplyChain #PropTech #AI #Fintech #HospitalityTech #TechEcosystem #AI #Hospitality #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Retail

This is exactly why product-market fit is everything. You can have the smartest people, the best tech, and funding - but if you can’t nail that fit, it’s game over. Toplyne’s shutting down isn’t because they didn’t try hard enough, it’s because they didn’t find the sweet spot between what they offered and what the market needed right now. A lot of founders get stuck in the building mode, thinking more features or more funding will fix things. But here’s the truth: the market doesn’t care about your tech unless it’s solving a real problem that people are willing to pay for. You need to obsess over that early, be relentless in testing, pivoting, and listening to your users. Don’t just fall in love with your product, fall in love with solving a problem.

At Costanoa Ventures we work with a lot of early stage founders to help them get product market fit. But over the years it's become clear to us that the order is wrong: founders should focus on MARKET product fit. The best founders (and their teams) dive in and understand the market they are selling to, the big hairy problems that exist in that market, what pain the buyers have...and THEN build products to solve those problems. This is the first of a two part series where we will look some best practices including: 1. Build with the market you can get, not an ideal customer. 2. Own your unique point-of-view before you have the product. 3. Avoid being too focused early on; go wide then throw away ideas to focus. 4. Focus on conversations, not sales. We're lucky work with great companies in our portfolio and highlight some examples of their work: SGNL, Delphina, Feldera, BrightGo. Thanks to those founders for sharing with us: Scott Kriz, Erik Gustavson, Duncan Gilchrist, Jeremy Hermann, Lalith Suresh, Gerald Fong and Saagar Deshpande. It's a pleasure to work with you. Figuring out "market product fit" is key to unlocking growth and building repeatable go-to-market that allows you to scale. We'd love feedback, examples and discussion. https://lnkd.in/gqh2pg9E Special thanks to Martina Lauchengco who co-authored this and prodded us to rethink PMF. #startup #earlystage #founders #entrepeneur #sales

SaaS startup Toplyne is shutting operations due to its inability to scale and find product-market fit. The startup has decided to return the capital to its investors, cofounder and CEO Rishen Kapoor shared in a LinkedIn post, without elaborating on the quantum of the capital which would be returned👇 “After 3.5 years of building Toplyne, we’ve made the tough decision to wind down operations and return capital to our investors. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t reach the scale or product-market fit we aimed for,” Kapoor said. The cofounder said that the startup’s team would be supported in finding new roles. Founded in 2021 by Kapoor, Ruchin Kulkarni, and Rohit Khanna, Toplyne offers an AI-powered platform to help product-led companies convert their free users into paid ones. It claims that its AI learns from customer data to generate audiences that can be converted with ads, in-app nudges, email, sales, and more. 📎 To read the in-depth article, click here: https://lnkd.in/grRjpeQd #news #startups #investors #SaaS

🚀 Exciting News Alert! Clientell Raises $2.5M in Seed Funding Round 🚀 Thrilled to announce that Clientell, the AI-powered SaaS startup, has secured $2.5 million in a seed round led by Blume Ventures, with participation from Chiratae Ventures, Artha Venture Fund, and Silicon Valley-based Z5 Capital. Founded in 2021 by Saahil Dhaka and Neil Sarkar, Clientell is on a mission to revolutionize revenue operations for businesses. By leveraging AI copilots, the Bengaluru-based startup helps companies enhance revenue generation efficiency, optimize pipeline governance, and streamline forecasting. Saahil Dhaka, co-founder of Clientell, emphasizes, "Our focus is on empowering salespeople, CRM developers, and GTM leaders with actionable AI-driven insights." The startup's innovative approach has garnered attention, with previous support from Chiratae Ventures through its seed investment initiative, Sonic. With this new funding, Clientell aims to further enhance its product offerings and expand its talented team. Chiratae Ventures' Managing Director and Partner, Venkatesh Peddi, expressed confidence in Clientell's vision, stating, "We believe in the disruptive potential of Revenue Operations, and Clientell's platform has already received positive feedback from early adopters." This investment marks an expansion of Blume Ventures' AI portfolio, reflecting the growing interest in AI technology within the venture capital landscape. In a similar vein, recent funding rounds for GenAI startups in India highlight the industry's momentum and potential for innovation. Sanjay Nath, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, underscores the significance of Clientell's AI-first approach in unlocking comprehensive revenue intelligence for enterprise sales teams. congratulating Clientell on this milestone achievement as they continue to drive innovation in revenue operations with cutting-edge AI solutions! 🎉 #AI #SaaS #Startup #Funding #RevenueOperations https://lnkd.in/gsVse5an

If you’re in LA next week and interested in discussing how to create leverage and scale oneself as a founder (via automation, no-code, AI, and BPO/outsourcing), come hang out with us IRL! As a bootstrapped solo founder, I would have been dead in the water without these tools… Yet I am still only scratching the surface of what’s possible. For a very different perspective, we’ll also have the CEO of one of the largest outsourcing companies, Enshored, tell us How It’s Done.

Carta has been a leader in supporting 40K startups from seed to exit in the ecosystem. Startup veteran Bhavik Vashi shares invaluable insights into how it has scaled through data, culture and strategy. Read the full article ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gCtFJsnJ #fintech #AspireforStartups #entrepreneurs

Finally did it and recorded a walkthrough of everything I learned about #financialmodelling for startups (mainly B2B SaaS) over the last few years and sharing part of it with you here for free. The learnings are based on tens of startups invested in (as angel and via my venture Uplift1), tens of startups supported directly in modelling and fundraising and a high double-digit million amount that they raised afterwards. In this walkthrough I cover: - the role of a financial model in your day to day ops and during fundraising - what belongs in a financial model and how I structure it (early stage B2B SaaS focus) - the structure of individual tabs, their sub-sections and a very detailed breakdown of the formulas (I show several different ways how to model the most frequent issues) - what to focus on to tell the right "story" to investors - and on top will likely also make the file available (still tbd). The model has received the "seal of approval" from several partners of highly-renowned VCs which I'm very happy about. Who is this for? - People who are new to financial modelling for startups, e.g. first-time founders or investors who want to get their modelling skills up to speed. Seasoned operators/investors might find it valuable for picking up best practices. How to get access? => comment "modelling" below + send me a connection invite => I will send you first part of the walk through for free (~25 min loom video) The rest will probably be paid or I do a paid workshop. Still considering. But first part of the walk-through will def be for free and already contains lots of valuable insights on the role and structure of my model template. This walkthrough is exactly what I wish I had when I started my journey in venture. Hence, I want to get this out there to help people who are were I started. There are just too many accumulated learnings in there to offer it entirely for free, but I'm planning to make as much of it as possible available for free over time. I might also share some more learnings in individual posts etc. so stay tuned. #financialmodelling #startups #venture