JumpySushi

Hi, I’m Sourabh, Co-founder & CTO of KushoAI, Ask me anything!

Hi Grapevine community,

Thank you for giving our previous post (https://bit.ly/44X5IJh) so much love.

I’m the technical co-founder at KushoAI and have previously worked at EMC, Ninjacart and FalconX as a full-stack software engineer.

Here to chat with you about everything from transitioning from being an IC developer to a founder, building on top of foundational Generative AI models, leading engineering teams, and building products that help devs do their job better.

I’ve learned first hand how difficult it is to build products from scratch, ship features within tight timelines, and manage on-call at odd hours when things break in prod.

I’ll be back at 4pm today to answer all your questions!

6mo ago

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SleepyBagel

SAP6mo

What's a underappreciated skill that devs should focus more on?

JumpySushi

Kusho AI6mo

@GlassAttic Great question! I feel learning some product skills where you think about the end user’s wants and needs will go a long way in making you a better dev. Being able to communicate your ideas effectively is another thing that’s underappreciated, but becomes more and more important as you grow in your career and have to manage teams/stakeholders.

SparklyNugget

Cred6mo

Hi Sourabh,

Curious. How did you get into this problem statement? I want to get into building, and SaaS is very lucrative. But how does one even identify and empathize with something like 'API testing' challenges?

JumpySushi

Kusho AI6mo

@OpulentDong Hey! For me (and a lot of devs), testing is a problem very close to my heart. In my experience, most devs hate testing, but on the flipside, if you don’t test your product properly, you’ll be woken up in the middle of the night to fix issues. Which is why it was easy to empathize with this particular problem for me, because I’ve faced it myself numerous times. Regarding how to identify challenges, I feel that instead of looking for things that seem lucrative and then trying to empathize, you should go after problems that you have personally faced and then pick the most lucrative one from it.

SwirlyKoala

EY6mo

I would suggest getting a competitive term sheet from a top VC now. I like what you are doing. It would be a shame if LightSpeed/PeakXV/Accel/Matrix dont invest in you guys.

JumpySushi

Kusho AI6mo

@ShallowSpawn Hey! We’ve just raised a pre-seed round and have built out an initial product and are iterating and getting traction. We’ll look at raising more soon once we need fuel to scale.

JumpyLlama

Razorpay6mo

Hey. Can you share more about how to PMF discovery process look for you guys? Like where would you be on that journey, and what would be the logical steps to get to PMF with Kusho

JumpySushi

Kusho AI6mo

@SubtleRefund Hey! We’re definitely at the early stages of finding PMF. Being a category creator product, there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of discovering where exactly will users see value at scale. The process remains quite simple - putting our product in the hands of users, getting feedback, and iterating ruthlessly without biases getting in the way. It’s served us well so far and will hopefully get us all the way to PMF.

JumpyLlama

Razorpay6mo

Thank you for answering! One follow up: in terms of category creation - you must have global startups also going for the same users, no? Or is it very nascent?

PeppyHamster

Flipkart6mo

Hi Sourabh,

So when someone is trying to get a job at early stage start up like yours, what should be the approach as its generally a small team of tight knit people generally at this early stages?

Also what should be the ideal mindset and expectations of a early employee in your opinion as a founder?

JumpySushi

Kusho AI6mo

@awkward_potato Like you said, since the teams are tight-knit, many early stage startups end up hiring through personal connections and referrals. But we also made a few hires through platforms like AngelList and engineering slack/discord communities, so those are good places to track.

In terms of the skill-set needed, an early stage startup prioritizes candidates who have an overlap of competency and experience in their prior work, because there’s limited scope and funds to experiment. You’re expected to ramp up quickly and deliver outcomes at the earliest, without much hand-holding. There’s also always the unpredictability that accompanies daily operations, as opposed to structured processes in a larger company. Make sure you’re prepared for all of these things when considering working for an early stage startup.