From Nokia to Netflix, some of the world’s greatest companies today exist because they understood the importance of pivoting from an unsuccessful business model to a promising one. Closer home, one young entrepreneur learned the importance of pivoting when she lost “every customer” in one month.
Khyati Thakur opened up about the challenges of building a startup and the importance of innovating in a LinkedIn post — sharing that she had quit a high-paying job to build her own company.
The co-founder of Fridayy AI also revealed that the startup once lost “every customer” in 30 days, forcing them to rethink their business strategy completely.
‘Quit ₹75 LPA job’
Thakur, who holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Southern California, revealed that she was earning ₹75 lakh in a tech job. She chose to give up that impressive salary in order to build her own startup, but soon faced an unprecedented challenge.
“I quit my ₹75 LPA job to build a startup. Our first product, ChatGPT and Google AI made it irrelevant. We lost every customer in 30 days,” she shared on LinkedIn.
“It took us 7 months to find a pivot. Another 9 to build something meaningful,” the co-founder of Fridayy AI revealed.
{{/usCountry}}“It took us 7 months to find a pivot. Another 9 to build something meaningful,” the co-founder of Fridayy AI revealed.
{{/usCountry}}Fridayy helps small businesses create online stores, product catalogues and marketing content and sell across marketplaces using AI.
Thakur admitted that building a company has been extremely difficult, with a long pivot, slow B2B sales and a limited runway, but she is still glad that she took the risk and gave it everything.
The challenges of building a startup
“Now our runway is thinner than I would like, B2B sales cycles are 3–4 months long, and we're looking for investors who understand the idea and are ready to back it,” Thakur said in her LinkedIn post, admitting that her startup doesn’t have a lot of money left to fund its operations and needs to raise more investment relatively soon.
She was careful to add that she wasn’t writing about these challenges to deter would-be entrepreneurs. Instead, she wanted them to understand what it takes to build a successful business.
“I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'm telling you because building something takes an unlimited, insane, almost delusional belief in yourself,” she said.
In her note to fellow founders, Thakur said that not choosing a steady paycheck could feel foolish at times, but building anything great requires a degree of risk.
“Everyone says knowing when to quit is a sign of intelligence. But you won't know when to quit. You'll want to give it one last shot, hoping this time it works. Because the thrill of building something of your own is inexplicable.”
The Pune-based founder ended her post on a positive note, saying that building a startup had taught her more than any job could.