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Hey y’all - Startups rarely die from a lack of ambition.
They die because they scale before they're ready.

In the rush to show traction, it’s tempting to pour energy into marketing, team expansion, or new features. But here’s the real question: Do users care enough to come back, without a reminder, without a push?

If the answer isn’t a confident yes, scaling is a distraction.
Premature growth burns cash, time, and attention, resources better spent on building something users genuinely need.

This week, we’re diving into what matters most in the early stage:

✅ Getting to product truth
✅ Earning organic user pull
✅ Leveraging focus over force

Because real growth doesn’t come from shouting louder.
It comes from building something so valuable that people talk about it, return to it, and tell others.

Here’s today at a glance:

PS - Become a member to get access to my founder membership including an engaged community, fundraising support, fireside chats and more.

🔗 Mohit’s Picks

My favourite finds of the week 

• Sam Altman on Importance of Agency [Link]

• Which organic marketing channels provide the best leads for B2B and B2C? [Link]

• 15 trailblazing startups of I‑HEAL [Link]

• The Great Startup Collapse [Link]

• How To Monetize The Unique Talents That Could Make You Rich [Link]

💡 Opportunity: Build Credit Score Infrastructure for the Unscored Bharat

Let’s face it- traditional credit bureaus in India are built for a sliver of the population. For over 400 million underbanked Indians, the current system barely registers their financial reality. No salary slips. No credit cards. No formal history.

But that doesn’t mean they’re high risk.
It just means we’re not measuring the right signals.

👉 Opportunity: Build an API-first infrastructure layer that allows fintechs, NBFCs, and gig platforms to assess user trustworthiness using alternative data.

Think beyond CIBIL. Think Bharat.

📊 Alternative data rails might include:

• UPI transaction patterns

• Prepaid mobile recharge behavior

• MSME invoice histories

• Wallet cash flows for gig workers

• Agri-input purchase cycles

Plug this into an API stack that integrates directly with:

• Lending apps

• NBFC dashboards

• Gig economy wallets

• Agri-fintech underwriting flows

And yes - regional language UX and onboarding will be key to building trust with Tier 2/3 users.

🎯 Why this matters:

• The next lending wave will be embedded, inside consumer apps, farm platforms, and worker dashboards.

• NBFCs are hungry for smarter underwriting pipes.

• Agri-tech, gig platforms, and rural fintechs are flying blind.

India doesn’t need a better CIBIL.
It needs a CIBIL for the unscored, one that reflects real-world financial activity, not just legacy banking behavior.

If you're thinking infra + Bharat + embedded finance... this might be your moment

🧠 Framework: MVP ≠ Crappy Product

Too many founders mistake an MVP for a bare-minimum, low-effort prototype.

But here’s the real lens:

Think of it this way:

👉 Minimum Viable Product = Maximum Learning per Line of Code

The goal isn’t to impress. It’s to understand.

Before you write a single line of code, ask yourself:

• What’s the simplest version that tests if this is a real pain?

• Can I fake the backend and still validate intent?

• Will a user remember this experience, even if it's rough around the edges?

The best MVPs aren’t polished.
They’re memorable.
Because even if they’re duct-taped behind the scenes, they make the user feel something: relief, excitement, value.

So yes, ship dirty. But never ship dull.

Build small, test fast, learn faster.
That’s how real products begin.

Your first version won’t be perfect. But if it teaches you something useful, it’s doing its job.

🛠️ Tool: Glide

No-code founders, rejoice.

Glide lets you build full-featured mobile or web apps directly from Google Sheets.

Perfect for:

• Building dashboards for internal ops

• Testing client-facing UIs

• Creating lead-gen tools, MVPs, or CRM solutions in hours

Bonus: Beautiful default UI + works on mobile instantly.

📈 Trend: AI Co-Pilots for Blue Collar Jobs

While the tech world races to build AI agents for coders, analysts, and executives, a more meaningful opportunity is quietly unfolding: AI for blue-collar India.

Think beyond Silicon Valley. Think kirana shops, electricians, field workers, factory floors.

Startups are beginning to tap into this vast, underserved market by creating hyper-local, voice-first, task-driven tools like:

🎙️ Voice-based assistants in Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali that help shop owners check inventory, reorder supplies, or track payments, hands-free.

📱 Inventory bots for kirana stores, designed for low-end phones (like KaiOS) that don’t require data-heavy apps.

🏭 Factory-floor co-pilots for safety checks, maintenance logging, or workflow reminders, optimized for noisy environments and glove-friendly interfaces.

Why this matters:

🛠️ Blue-collar users don’t want dashboards or metrics. They want clear, instant answers.
💸 Done right, AI can increase income per hour, not just automate tasks.
🌏 This is where true mass-market AI lives, and it’s still wide open.

If you’re looking for PMF in India, stop building for the top 10,000.
Start building for the next billion users.

💬 Quote: Rahul Vohra (Superhuman)

Many founders chase product-market fit with intuition and hope. But the smartest ones track it with data.

Enter the Sean Ellis test, a simple but powerful signal. Ask your users:

👉 “How disappointed would you be if this product no longer existed?”

If fewer than 40% say “very disappointed,” you’re not there yet.
No shame. Just insight.

Instead of debating in Slack threads or relying on anecdotal feedback, this gives you a real metric for real traction.

Because guessing leads to wasted roadmap cycles.
Measuring gets you to PMF faster, and smarter.

Stop guessing. Start asking. Build better.

Got more feedback or just want to get in touch? Reply to this email and we’ll get back to you.

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